Ten Freedom Summers

Ten Freedom Summers
Live album and box set by Wadada Leo Smith
Released May 8, 2012 (2012-05-08)
Recorded November 4–6, 2011
Venue Zipper Hall in Los Angeles
Genre Free jazz, contemporary classical
Length 273:48
Label Cuneiform
Producer Southwest Chamber Music, Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith chronology
Dark Lady of the Sonnets
(2011)Dark Lady of the Sonnets2011		 Ten Freedom Summers
(2012)		 Ancestors
(2012)Ancestors2012

Ten Freedom Summers is a four-disc box set by American trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith. It was released on May 5, 2012, by Cuneiform Records. Smith wrote its compositions intermittently over the course of 34 years, beginning in 1977, before performing them live in November 2011 at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by the nine-piece Southwest Chamber Music ensemble and his own jazz quartet, featuring drummers Pheeroan akLaff and Susie Ibarra, pianist Anthony Davis, and bassist John Lindberg.

A free jazz and contemporary classical work, Ten Freedom Summers comprises 19 pieces that are mostly fully developed suites. They eschew conventional themes for abstract expressions of the subject matter, which focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and other interrelated topics. Smith cites the segregation of his native Mississippi and playwright August Wilson's The Pittsburgh Cycle as inspirations behind the work. Ten Freedom Summers received widespread critical acclaim and was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013.

Background

The concert hall of the Colburn School (pictured in 2007)

Smith started Ten Freedom Summers in 1977, when he wrote the piece "Medgar Evers" as an evocation of the eponymous civil rights activist gunned down in Mississippi in 1963. Smith subsequently worked intermittently on the project.[1] He spent 34 years writing it,[2] supported by a series of residencies, grants and commissions, the final one from the Southwest Chamber Music ensemble.[3] He completed the pieces in a flurry of activity between 2009 and 2011.[4] Smith was inspired to assemble the pieces into one group by August Wilson's 10-play series The Pittsburgh Cycle.[3] Smith has also said of the idea behind Ten Freedom Summers:

"I was born in 1941 and grew up in segregated Mississippi and experienced the conditions which made it imperative for an activist movement for equality. I saw that stuff happening. Those are the moments that triggered this. It was in that same environment that I had my first dreams of becoming a composer and performer."[1]

Ten Freedom Summers was recorded at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles, where Smith performed live for three nights from November 4 to November 6, 2011.[5] He played 19 pieces, accompanied by either his Golden Quartet, the nine-piece Southwest Chamber Music ensemble conducted by Jeff von der Schmidt, or both.[6] Smith's quartet featured drummers Pheeroan akLaff and Susie Ibarra, pianist Anthony Davis, and bassist John Lindberg.[5]

Composition

Ten Freedom Summers comprises four discs for a total of four-and-a-half hours of music. Most of its 19 pieces were fully developed suites, with three spanning over 20 minutes. According to Smith, there were no recurring motifs throughout.[6] Instead of using his own "Ankhrasmation" method of graphic notation, Smith wrote Ten Freedom Summers with a traditionally notated score. His Golden Quartet played music rooted in blues and jazz idioms, and the Southwest Chamber Music ensemble played violin, viola, cello, harp, concert bass, glockenspiel, bass clarinet, flute, tympani, marimba, gongs, and other miscellaneous percussion.[3] In the opinion of All About Jazz writer Mark Redlefsen, Smith's use of echo-laden, atmospheric sounds in his previous work culminated on Ten Freedom Summers, whose somber mood reflected the pieces' titles.[8]

The compositions were organized in three principal sections—"Defining Moments in America", "What Is Democracy?", and "Freedom Summers".[4] Each section's pieces musically described significant figures associated with the Civil Rights Movement during 1954 to 1964 and concepts relevant to the formation of institutions that evolved from human interaction, including government, media, and megacorporations.[3] Jeff Dayton-Johnson from All About Jazz said although its movements "variously address Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Brown vs. Board of Education, Medgar Evers [and] the Little Rock Nine", the "thematic concerns nevertheless extend ... both backwards (to the 1857 Dred Scott case) and forward (to 9/11), and to a series of cross-cutting concerns (e.g., democracy, the freedom of the press and the black church)."[6]

According to Josh Langhoff from PopMatters, the box set's pieces "transform their subjects into musical invention and moods; they’re not literal or programmatic." Langhoff finds them similar to contemporary classical pieces in how they "make their points through abstraction."[7] Daniel Spicer of BBC Music characterized the music as "a mixture of austere contemporary classical composition performed by the LA-based Southwest Chamber Music ensemble, and turbulent free jazz improvised by the Golden Quartet".[9] In the opinion of jazz critic John Fordham, the presence of either Smith's jazz quartet or the classical ensemble led him to abandon typical themes and continuous pulses in favor of free jazz and contemporary classical idioms.[10] Bob Rusch believed the performances were not inspired by contemporary Civil Rights Movement music by artists such as Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, Mahalia Jackson, or Aretha Franklin, because Smith's Golden Quintet exhibited an astral, chamber sound.[11]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic99/100[12]
Review scores
SourceRating
All About Jazz[13]
AllMusic[4]
The Guardian[10]
The Independent[14]
musicOMH[15]
PopMatters10/10[7]

Ten Freedom Summers received widespread acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received a weighted average score of 99, based on 8 reviews.[12] In The Guardian, Fordham called it "a landmark in jazz's rich canon",[10] while Bill Shoemaker of The Wire deemed it "a monumental evocation of America's civil rights movement".[16] Glen Hall of Exclaim! wrote that "Smith's music resonates with the suffering and the dreams of a better life that embodied the decade of 1954 to 1964 that is the subject of this powerful compendium of compositions."[17] AllMusic's Thom Jurek viewed the box set as Smith's best work, writing that it "belongs in jazz's canonical lexicon with Duke Ellington's Black Brown & Beige and Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite."[4] Phil Johnson from The Independent found the music very gratifying, comparing it to if Miles Davis had recorded Ligeti during the 1950s.[14] Langhoff wrote in PopMatters that the set was "about sound: the tangible, physically beautiful sounds of Smith's imperative trumpet and of different instruments in combination, testing their own limits." He asserted in conclusion, "In four and a half hours, Wadada Leo Smith writes one of America's defining events in sound, and the story is all of ours."[7] In Cadence Magazine, Rusch was less enthusiastic and felt the box set could have benefitted from being released as four separate albums, writing that listening to the record in its entirety was "exhausting, but also involving and inspiring".[11]

Ten Freedom Summers was ranked as one of the best jazz albums of 2012 by AllMusic,[18] All About Jazz,[19] JazzTimes,[20] and the Chicago Reader.[21] Bret Saunders from The Denver Post named it 2012's best jazz record,[22] and Down Beat magazine named it their album of the year.[23] It was also ranked number 31 in The Wire's list of 2012's best albums.[24] Ten Freedom Summers was one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, along with Aaron Jay Kernis's classical composition "Pieces of Winter Sky" and "Partita for 8 Voices" by Caroline Shaw, who ultimately won the award.[25]

Track listing

All music composed by Wadada Leo Smith.

Disc one
No.TitleLength
1."Dred Scott: 1857"11:48
2."Malik Al Shabazz and the People of the Shahada"5:15
3."Emmett Till: Defiant, Fearless"18:02
4."Thurgood Marshall and Brown vs. Board of Education: A Dream of Equal Education, 1954"15:05
5."John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and the Space Age, 1960"22:08
Disc two
No.TitleLength
1."Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 381 Days"12:43
2."Black Church"16:35
3."Freedom Summer: Voter Registration, Acts of Compassion and Empowerment, 1964"12:34
4."Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964"24:12
Disc three
No.TitleLength
1."Freedom Riders Ride"16:40
2."Medgar Evers: A Love-Voice of a Thousand Years' Journey for Liberty and Justice"10:07
3."D.C. Wall: A War Memorial for All Times"12:17
4."Buzzsaw: The Myth of a Free Press"15:03
5."Little Rock Nine: A Force for Desegregation in Education, 1957"13:49
Disc four
No.TitleLength
1."America, Parts 1, 2 & 3"14:11
2."September 11th, 2001: A Memorial"9:39
3."Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964"8:36
4."Democracy"14:30
5."Martin Luther King, Jr: Memphis, the Prophecy"20:34

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[5]

Release history

Region Date Label Format
Canada[26] May 8, 2012 Cuneiform Records CD
Japan[27] May 20, 2012
United Kingdom[28][29] May 21, 2012
May 22, 2012 digital download
United States[30] CD, digital download

References

  1. 1 2 "Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet". Cuneiform Records. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  2. ↑ Burk, Greg (October 23, 2011). "Wadada Leo Smith's opus". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Horton, Lyn (November 5, 2011). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". JazzTimes. Quincy. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Jurek, Thom. "Ten Freedom Summers – Wadada Leo Smith". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 Cotton, Dorothy; Sumera, Matthew (2012). Ten Freedom Summers (CD liner). Wadada Leo Smith. Silver Spring: Cuneiform Records. 350/351/352/353.
  6. 1 2 3 Dayton-Johnson, Jeff (June 18, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". All About Jazz. Vision X Software. pp. 1–3. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Langhoff, Josh (August 31, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". PopMatters. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  8. ↑ Redlefsen, Mark (June 25, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". All About Jazz. Vision X Software. Retrieved January 19, 2013.
  9. ↑ "Review of Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". BBC Music. 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  10. 1 2 3 Fordham, John (August 30, 2012). "Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers – review". The Guardian. London. section G2, p. 24. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  11. 1 2 Rusch, Bob (2013). "Papatamus". Cadence Magazine. Portland. 39 (1): 55–56. ISSN 0162-6973.
  12. 1 2 "Ten Freedom Summers Reviews, Ratings, Credits, and More". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
  13. ↑ Sharpe, John (July 8, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". All About Jazz. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
  14. 1 2 Johnson, Phil (June 3, 2012). "Album: Wadada Leo Smith, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform)". The Independent. London. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  15. ↑ Paton, Daniel. "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". musicOMH. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
  16. ↑ Shoemaker, Bill (May 2012). "Review: Ten Freedom Summers". The Wire. London.
  17. ↑ Hall, Glen (May 29, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". Exclaim!. Toronto. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
  18. ↑ Staff (December 24, 2012). "AllMusic’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2012". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
  19. ↑ Sharpe, John (December 26, 2012). "John Sharpe’s Best Releases of 2012". All About Jazz. Vision X Software. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
  20. ↑ "JazzTimes' Top 50 CDs: Individual Ballots". JazzTimes. Quincy. January 2, 2013. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
  21. ↑ Margasak, Peter (December 28, 2012). "My favorite jazz albums of 2012". Chicago Reader. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
  22. ↑ Saunders, Bret (December 23, 2012). "Top ten jazz albums of 2012". The Denver Post. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
  23. ↑ "Ten Freedom Summers". Acclaimed Music. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  24. ↑ "2012 Rewind". The Wire. London (347). January 2013.
  25. ↑ Talbott, Chris (April 15, 2013). "Caroline Shaw Wins 2013 Pulitzer Music Prize". Billboard. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
  26. ↑ "Ten Freedom Summers : 4CD". HMV Canada. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
  27. ↑ "Ten Freedom Summers" (in Japanese). HMV Japan. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
  28. ↑ "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers: 4cd (2012)". HMV UK. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
  29. ↑ "Ten Freedom Summers (2012)". 7digital. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
  30. ↑ "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers CD Album". CD Universe. Muze. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.

Further reading

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