Ten Freedom Summers
Ten Freedom Summers | ||||
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Live album and box set by | ||||
Released | May 8, 2012 | |||
Recorded | November 4–6, 2011 | |||
Venue | Zipper Hall (Los Angeles) | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 273:48 | |||
Label | Cuneiform | |||
Producer |
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Wadada Leo Smith chronology | ||||
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Ten Freedom Summers is a four-disc
A mostly
Background
Smith started Ten Freedom Summers in 1977, when he wrote the piece "Medgar Evers" as an evocation of the
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 and performance
Ten Freedom Summers comprises four discs for a total of four-and-a-half hours of music. Most of its 19 pieces are fully
The compositions are organized in three principal sections—"Defining Moments in America", "What Is Democracy?", and "Freedom Summers".
According to Josh Langhoff from
Critical reception
Aggregate scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Tom Hull – on the Web | B+ ()[18] |
Ten Freedom Summers was met with widespread critical acclaim. At
Reviewing for
In
At the end of 2012, Ten Freedom Summers was ranked as one of the year's best jazz albums in lists published by AllMusic,[23] All About Jazz,[24] JazzTimes,[25] and the Chicago Reader.[26] Bret Saunders from The Denver Post named it 2012's best jazz record,[27] and it was ranked #22 for Jazz Album of the Year in the 77th Annual DownBeat Readers Poll,[28] as well as being included in the magazine's "Best CDs of 2012" feature.[29] It was also ranked number 31 in The Wire's list of 2012's best albums.[30] 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.[31]
Track listing
All music is composed by Wadada Leo Smith
No. | Title | Length |
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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 |
Total length: | 72:18 |
No. | Title | Length |
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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 |
Total length: | 66:04 |
No. | Title | Length |
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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 |
Total length: | 67:56 |
No. | Title | Length |
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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 |
Total length: | 67:30 |
Personnel
Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[5]
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Release history
Region | Date | Label | Format |
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Canada[32] | May 8, 2012 | Cuneiform | CD |
Japan[33] | May 20, 2012 | ||
United Kingdom[34][35] | May 21, 2012 | ||
May 22, 2012 | Digital download | ||
United States[36] |
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References
- ^ a b "Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet". Cuneiform Records. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ Burk, Greg (October 23, 2011). "Wadada Leo Smith's opus". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ a b c d Horton, Lyn (November 5, 2011). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". JazzTimes. Quincy. Retrieved January 20, 2013.
- ^ Rovi Corporation. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
- ^ a b c Cotton, Dorothy; Sumera, Matthew (2012). Ten Freedom Summers (CD liner). Wadada Leo Smith. Silver Spring: Cuneiform Records. 350/351/352/353.
- ^ a b c 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 12, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Redlefsen, Mark (June 25, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". All About Jazz. Vision X Software. Retrieved January 19, 2013.
- ^ Matzner, Franz A. (June 18, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Sounding America's Freedom". All About Jazz. Retrieved September 9, 2020.
- ^ a b c d Langhoff, Josh (August 31, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". PopMatters. Archived from the original on February 16, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
- ^ "Review of Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". BBC Music. 2012. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
- ^ Ratliff, Ben (May 3, 2013). "Stirring and Sad, a Jazz Montage of a Struggle". The New York Times. p. C1. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ a b c Fordham, John (August 30, 2012). "Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers – review". The Guardian. London. section G2, p. 24. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ ISSN 0162-6973.
- ^ CBS Interactive. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Sharpe, John (July 8, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers". All About Jazz. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
- ^ Larkin, Cormac (June 15, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith". The Irish Times. Retrieved 24 June 2018.
- ^ Paton, Daniel. "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". musicOMH. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ a b Hull, Tom (July 2012). "Jazz Prospecting: July 2012". Tom Hull – on the Web. Retrieved July 2, 2020.
- ^ "Best Music and Albums of All Time". Metacritic. Retrieved September 14, 2019.
- ^ Shoemaker, Bill (May 2012). "Review: Ten Freedom Summers". The Wire. London.
- ^ Hall, Glen (May 29, 2012). "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers". Exclaim!. Toronto. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
- ^ Johnson, Phil (June 3, 2012). "Album: Wadada Leo Smith, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform)". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 2022-05-26. Retrieved January 15, 2013.
- ^ Staff (December 24, 2012). "AllMusic's Favorite Jazz Albums of 2012". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
- ^ Sharpe, John (December 26, 2012). "John Sharpe's Best Releases of 2012". All About Jazz. Vision X Software. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
- ^ "JazzTimes' Top 50 CDs: Individual Ballots". JazzTimes. Quincy. January 2, 2013. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
- ^ Margasak, Peter (December 28, 2012). "My favorite jazz albums of 2012". Chicago Reader. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
- ^ Saunders, Bret (December 23, 2012). "Top ten jazz albums of 2012". The Denver Post. Retrieved March 17, 2013.
- ^ "77th Annual Readers Poll: Jazz Album of the Year". DownBeat. December 2012. p. 62.
- ^ "Best CDs of 2012". DownBeat. January 2013. p. 53.
- ^ "2012 Rewind". The Wire (347). London. January 2013.
- ^ Talbott, Chris (April 15, 2013). "Caroline Shaw Wins 2013 Pulitzer Music Prize". Billboard. Retrieved September 10, 2015.
- HMV Canada. Archivedfrom the original on May 19, 2015. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
- ^ "Ten Freedom Summers" (in Japanese). HMV Japan. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
- ^ "Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers: 4cd (2012)". HMV UK. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ "Ten Freedom Summers (2012)". 7digital. Archived from the original on May 19, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ "Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers CD Album". CD Universe. Muze. Archived from the original on May 20, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
Further reading
- Fischlin, Daniel (2012). "Improvocracy, or Improvising the Civil Rights Movement in Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers". Critical Studies in Improvisation. 8 (1).
- Matzner, Franz A. (March 14, 2011). "Wadada Leo Smith: The Teacher". All About Jazz.