Wadada Leo Smith: Music of the Mind

Drawing Sounds, Listening to Symbols

For more than six decades, composer, trumpeter, and activist Wadada Leo Smith (*1941, Mississippi) has created colorful scores. Far more than musical notations, these works on paper are autonomous artworks of profound spiritual depth and poetic power. Through ›Ankhrasmation‹—a ›Symbolic Music Language‹ that the artist describes as a discovery—he opens a creative cosmos in which art and music converge, and forms and colors embody sound and rhythm on paper.

The exhibition ›Music of the Mind‹ presents selected scores as large-scale reproductions in a storefront window, visible around the clock. QR codes allow passers-by to access sound recordings and experience the connection between visual composition and musical interpretation.

›Music of the Mind‹ focuses on the visual work of Wadada Leo Smith, a leading figure of the African American avant-garde who has released more than 80 albums and has been one of the defining voices in creative music for decades.