LaDonna Smith
Rare Earth
Lanthanides Series 
2002

Table of the Elements
[Ytterbium] SWC-LP-70
Phono LP, silkscreen

Violinist and violist LaDonna Smith has been on the international new music scene for well over 25 years. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she is an active performer, educator, publisher and artist, and has been responsible for keeping improvised music alive in the Southeastern United States. Her unique style of improvisation alternates between classical and extended techniques; she explores her instrument, painting scenarios and sound pictures as she plays. LaDonna has performed at practically every major improvisation festival and many of the New Music Festivals, and has toured Europe, the former USSR, Siberia, and Japan. She has also toured North America and Europe many times as Trans Duo, with guitarist Davey Williams. As musical partners, they maintain their own recording label, TransMuseq, and also co-edit the improvisor, the international journal of free improvisation.

“LaDonna Smith [is] clearly in the realm of undisputed masters, regardless of genre, along with John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Khan, Oum Khalsoum. The point of this pantheonic comparison is to acknowledge that free improvisation has such a dedicated representative. TransMuseq (LaDonna Smith and Davey Williams) has been the only American improvising group which has been devoted solely to improvisation at a consistently high level for a period of time roughly equivalent to the time Brits like Derek Bailey (and company) have been at it.

“LaDonna makes the violin sound like a million cranes flapping their wings through an amplifier. Her style includes sounds that transcend the personal, combined with a kind of technique which is obviously practiced, though never arrogant or overstated. Sometimes the music sounds like a motorcycle driven through the string section of an orchestra; at other times she forays into the upper stratosphere of coloratura soprano extracted from her instrument. Her vocals ring out like a fifth string added to the violin. The entire effect is a chorus/string section of worldly/other-worldly creations. She incorporates everything from the most refined, energetic glisses to polyphonics, harmonics and the scritchiest scatchiest horrors of scrape on wooden bones. As saxophonist Wally Shoup said, "A lot of people have played improvised music, but the question is, how many of them will be doing it ten or twenty years later?”
—Freeway

“Smith [is] demonstrating clearly that repose in the eye of the storm can inspire and catalyze the creative spirit."
—Cadence

“Her solo voice, viola and violin CD scrapes and howls, whistles and whinnys, often making strange allusions to a variety of genres. There is a convincing seriousness of purpose behind her highly accomplished stream-of-consciousness playing."
—The Wire

“Forays into the realms of barely tamed chaos ... an impressive complexity of texture, like some deranged nun chanting next to a devilish fiddler."
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“When she takes her fiddle and voice into the world, creating orchestral textures where jazz improv, bluegrass, contemporary classical, Celtic, and countless other influences commingle, the world is never the same again."
—San Francisco Bay Guardian

A Conduit for History Exploding in the Present Moment

TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS is a curatorial network and interdisciplinary platform, live-event presenter, and fine-arts publisher of print, audio, and film, lauded by Pitchfork Media as “a national treasure.” Since its origin as a record label in 1993, TotE has been dedicated to preserving, promoting, and promulgating works by international creators of experimental audio, electroacoustics, free-improvised performance, sonic sculpture, microtonality, and modern composition. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of sound and vision.  Each project demonstrates how a publishing concern might romp wild, unbridled from the carousel of convention.

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"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism are beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, Jeff Hunt produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions — not ossified museum objects.”

—Thomas Peake, Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©1992–2025 Table of the Elements ®2025 Table of the Elements Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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