the improvisor festival

performers
 

LaDonna Smith

It could be said that no one person has done as much for the progressive music and arts scene here in Alabama than violinist/violist LaDonna Smith. A pioneering female improviser whose career reaches back nearly four decades, LaDonna has been a pivotal figure on both the local and national music scene as the driving force behind the improvisor.  A multi-talented writer, philosopher, painter, sculptor, and teacher, Miss Smith's versatility as an artist is unmatched in its breadth. 

A violinist with a style uniquely her own, it has been said:    “Stage charisma, and an imaginative ear for the possibilities of timber, make Smith an appealing presence. In a solo set, she combined sawing on the violin's open strings with a set of frenzied wails on the remaining string, over which she sang an eerie cantalina. The effect was an impressive complexity of texture, like some deranged nun chanting next to a devilish fiddler."  
Philip Kennicott, Classical Music Critic
St. Louis POST DISPATCH    
 

  
Critic's Choice, Music 
LADONNA SMITH

"This adventurous violinist and vocalist resides in Birmingham, Ala., where she rarely leaves, letting such CD's as Eye of the Storm (TransMuseq) do her traveling for her. But when she takes her fiddle and voice into the world, creating orchestral textures where jazz improv, bluegrass, contemporary classical, Celtic, and countless other influences commingle, the world is never the same again."
-Derk Richardson,
SAN FRANSICO BAY GUARDIAN

 "The difference between improvisation I want to listen to and that which I don't, probably comes down to something like personality. Every note of LaDonna Smith's music has something of this quality, as well as a physical directness and a happy foolishness which says, "yes, I know this is silly, but…"

Her solo voice, viola and violin CD scrapes and howls, whistles and whinnys, often making strange allusions to a variety of genres but mainly alluding to nothing much at all. There is a convincing seriousness of purpose behind her highly accomplished stream-of-consciousness playing, most fully revealed in the searching title track,"
Richard Scott,  WIRE

EYE OF THE STORM
LaDonna Smith,

"LaDonna Smith's new CD puts her clearly in the realm of undisputed masters, regardless of genre, along with John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Khan, Oum Khalsoum…the point of this pantheonic comparison is to acknowledge that free improvisation has such a dedicated representative. TransMuseq (LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams) has been the only American improvising group which has been devoted solely to improvisation at a consistently high level for a period of time roughly equivalent to the time Brits like Derek Bailey (and company) have been at it. A lot of current players may not be aware of this "tradition," or may be choosing to ignore it.

LaDonna makes the violin sound like a million cranes flapping their wings through an amplifier. Her style includes sounds that transcend the personal, combined with a kind of technique which is obviously practiced, though never arrogant or overstated. Sometimes the music sounds like a motorcycle driven through the string section of an orchestra; at other times she forays into the upper stratosphere of coloratura soprano extracted from her instrument. Her vocals ring out like a fifth string added to the violin. The entire effect is a chorus/string section of worldly/other-worldly creations. She incorporates everything from the most refined, energetic glisses to polyphonics, harmonics and the scritchiest scatchiest horrors of scrape on wooden bones. The only difficulty I have is that listening to too many pieces at one time is like eating too much chocolate. I love chocolate, but too much makes me feel insane...   As saxophonist Wally Shoup said, "A lot of people have played improvised music, but the question is, how many of them will be doing it ten or twenty years later?"
Hillary Fielding & Ross Rabin,  (1985)
FREEWAY

DEVIANT SHAKTI
LaDonna Smith & Michael Evans (2009)

“Deviant Shakti” (2009) is a fantastic recording featuring two accomplished, venerable musicians performing at their improvisational height.  Evans, a percussionist and Theremin player,  has studied drums with Milford Graves, technique with Joe Morello, tabla with Misha Masud, kanjira with Ganesh Kumar and Hatian/Afro-Cuban hand-drumming with John Amira.  His playing in tandem with LaDonna highlights many of these influences and is imbued with remarkable subtlety and technique.  Smith has commented to me on several occasions her joy playing with percussionists, in particular Evans, and the rapport they exhibit on this recording shows off the ecstatic tendencies of her music.

Noted for her passion and virtuosity, Smith shines yet again on this release, and though I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss with her the qualification ‘deviant’ in the title “Deviant Shakti,” always present in her performances and recordings is that primordial energy to which she alludes.  For more of her take on her music and how it relates to her life, I did an interview with her for Perfect Sound Forever in 2003. Her thoughts and outlook are as profound as the sounds she creates.
P. Somniferum

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