Can anyone shed any light on whether WLS is playing solo or with the larger SHJ conglomerate? Actually, as a WLS neophyte, can anyone give me a little background on him anyway?

i certainly have no inside info, but it'd be reasonable to expect that smith will be playing with shj, given each of their recent proclivities. smith came out of the aacm, and some of his music shows that chicago warm improv feel. he's a great trumpet player who has demonstrated a devotion to miles, in experimentation and more directly on his 'yo miles' double disc with henry kaiser. tzadik has been great about recording him with jazz groups and his compositional work. a personal fave, tho, is on ecm, a solo recital called 'kulture jazz.' his most recent record, luminous axis (tzadik), delves into working with electronics, including a beautiful duo with ikue mori. smith and mori are playing at tonic in nyc on april 4. my review of luminous axis is here, if you want to read more: <http://www.squidsear.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=47> kg _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus