Wadada Leo Smith & Sylvie Courvoisier (SAD/Švajcarska)

Wadada Leo Smith – truba 

Sylvie Courvoisier – klavir 

Trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Wadada Leo Smith was born in Leland, Mississippi in 1941. Introduced to music by his stepfather, blues guitarist Alex "Little Bill" Wallace, he began composing at age twelve and played with Delta blues bands before studying composition and ethnomusicology in Chicago and at Wesleyan University. A key member of the AACM since 1967, he has collaborated with legends such as Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, and John Zorn. Smith defines his work as "Creative Music" and developed the symbolic notation system Ankhrasmation. A Pulitzer finalist for Ten Freedom Summers (2013), he has received multiple honors, including DownBeat’s triple crown in 2017. This year, he was ranked the No. 2 trumpeter in the DownBeat Critics Poll.

Pianist and composer Sylvie Courvoisier was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1968 and trained in classical music before embracing jazz and improvisation. Since 1998, she has been a vital figure on New York’s creative music scene, balancing her European classical roots with avant-garde exploration. She has collaborated with John Zorn, Mark Feldman, Ikue Mori, Wadada Leo Smith, and many others, and currently leads several ensembles while performing solo and in duos. A past guest of the Belgrade Jazz Festival (2014), she returns in 2025 as Swiss Grand Music Prize laureate and recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award. Her duo with Mary Halvorson, „Bone Bells“, ranks fifth on the latest DownBeat Critics Poll, while Courvoisier is the top-ranked European pianist. Her poetic collaboration with Wadada Leo Smith culminates in their new duo album „Angel Falls“, with Belgrade concert included in what will be Smith’s final European tour. 

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