Photo by Tolga Ahmetler

The piano enters stealthily, its ethereal elements exposed. A tentative trumpet follows, the flutter of the player’s tongue creating a sound not quite foreign to human ears and certainly not familiar. As if a veil of purple fog was playing with dewy blades of grass in a forest meadow, the piano continues suggesting an awakening as the trumpet moves toward a clarity found when that first ray of sunshine breaks through. The recording is called Angel Falls. Angel Falls is the Anglo name for the world’s tallest waterfall at 979 meters, and a plunge of 807 meters. It drops over the edge of the Auyán-tepui mountain in the Canaima National Park and is located in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State in Venezuela. The pianist on the recording being revealed here, Sylvie Courvoisier, remarks on another possible reference: “And I also like the image of an angel falling down.” Contemplate the concept. Does a falling angel make a sound; we know waterfalls do. When does a falling angel become a fallen angel?

There’s a chill of a certain kind I feel whenever the sound of Leo Wadada Smith’s trumpet first issues from whatever device I am listening to. It’s something akin to the shiver of anticipation before entering a place I’ve never been armed only with a general understanding that it will be unlike any other previous excursion, even if the surroundings seem intimately........

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