Wadada Leo Smith and Beauford – The Red Bar

I have always said that Beauford Delaney’s spirit creates magic, evokes magic—is magic.

The story behind legendary trumpetist Wadada Leo Smith’s performance at The Drawing Center during its 2025 solo exhibition entitled In the Medium of Life: The Drawings of Beauford Delaney is a perfect example of this.

Smith and N’da Kulture, an avant-garde musical ensemble formed by Smith in the 1990s, gathered at The Drawing Center on July 25, 2025, to regale a packed house with music Smith composed after encountering Beauford’s Untitled (Red Bar) (1962).

Untitled (Red Bar)
(1962) Gouache on paper
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

‍

After the performance, Smith said the following about this work:

“Aimee (Good) had invited me down to see the exhibit. And I looked at everything. Then, when I got to the Red Bar, I understood something that was really clear and direct and unclouded.

“What does the Red Bar represent? It's not a bar, by the way, but it's a structure or a stroke in which any bar can be constructed and only understood by the receiver who understood...”

Wadada Leo Smith
Bimhuis Amsterdam 12 October 2014
Dirk Neven, photographer
CC-BY-2.0

Smith encountered Good when she went to see his exhibition, Kosmic Music, at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  The works shown there represented over 50 years of what Smith calls art scores—artistic representations of a performable musical language called Ankhrasmation.

Kosmic Music, The Dream, 2008
© Wadada Leo Smith
Gel, inks, and acrylic on paper
12x18”

Good heard Smith perform at the Academy and asked him to contact her.  When he did, she extended the invitation for him to perform at In the Medium of Life.  At the time, she was unaware that he had met Beauford in Paris 56 years before.

Smith granted Les Amis an exclusive interview during which he recounted the story of that meeting.

As part of the iconic Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians in Chicago, he relocated to Paris with the other members of the group during the summer of 1969. Violinist Leroy Jenkins, who Smith described as a close colleague, was told that a famous painter was going to be present at a luncheon to be held at a Montparnasse restaurant.  He invited Smith to come along.

Smith didn’t know anyone at the event, and his only vocal interaction with Beauford was a timid “Hello”:

“… just from observing him, I kind of got a good, beautiful vibe.  We didn’t talk, and it was a brief moment in my life. 

“But you know, some people believe that eye contact is the essence of meeting.  I’m one of those people.”

Smith felt that the invitation to perform at The Drawing Center brought him and Beauford together again in a way that transcended time and space, and he visited In the Medium of Life several times in preparation for the performance.  Though he was “only” asked to perform, he felt compelled to compose a piece for the occasion.

When he saw Untitled (Red Bar), Smith was inspired by what he described as a “huge, beautiful patch inside that big Beauford yellow.”  He took out his notebook and began writing music for the performance on the spot, knowing that he would “construct several red bars” in the composition.  He described them as being sonic vertical stacks that would continuously evolve and constantly shift in this patch of color.  He said he added a horizontal line throughout the piece that consisted of different voices represented by the instruments played by the ensemble.

Sheet music for “Delaney: The Artist Untitled Red Bar”
Image courtesy of Wadada Leo Smith

Once he got home, he started thinking about the work and looking at it in the catalog and online.  His inspiration “started to churn,” and he began reflecting on how the image could be “infused” or “submerged as a musical quality.” *

Smith said he wanted to capture “a psychological profile of [Beauford’s] creativity” with “The Artist Untitled Red Bar.”  He wanted the music to be “Pure. Fresh.”  So, he deliberately chose musicians with whom he had never played before and allowed only 30-35 minutes of rehearsal of the piece on the day of the performance.

The ensemble musicians—Tom Chiu on violin, Joe Fonda on double bass and concert flute, Luke Stewart on double bass, and Eli Keszler on drums—had not encountered Beauford’s work prior to the concert. The Drawing Center gave each of them an exhibition catalog after the performance.

Listen to the entire concert HERE.

*This process inspired the work that The Beauford Delaney Project is pursuing through its Resonance program.