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Wadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet
The Chicago Symphonies
TUM Records TUM BOX 004
Like many of the eight albums timed to celebrate Smith’s 80th birthday in December 2021, the four works which comprise the blockbuster The Chicago Symphonies were actually recorded earlier, the first three back in 2015, the last in 2018. For this undertaking Smith reunites the stellar unit responsible for The Great Lakes Suites (TUM, 2014), a foursome completed by three bandleaders in their own right, reedman Henry Threadgill, bassist John Lindberg, and drummer Jack DeJohnette, with saxophonist Jonathon Haffner replacing Threadgill on the final date. You might call Smith’s explosion of creativity a late career blossoming, if that didn’t imply that what came before was some sort of hiatus or preparatory work. In fact, Smith has been on a consistent high for some time, and this quadruple disc box set just provides further confirmation.
If the title starts hares running, be aware that Smith draws his inspiration from Don Cherry’s 1966 Symphony For Improvisers, rather than the classical form. In consequence Smith presents four suites of conceptually, rather than thematically, linked pieces, which while entirely sui generis, still admit a strong connection to jazz. Each of the four symphonies pays tribute to significant Chicago figures. Smith’s expansive titles (here’s a typical example taken from Disc 1, “Gold Symphony – Movement 3: Pastoral: Joseph Jarman, As If It Were the Season of Seasons; Sherry Scott, Voice; Thurman Barker, Charles Clark and Christopher Gaddy”) honor variously his peers from the AACM, Windy City musical and cultural forebears, and finally two of America’s most notable leaders, Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln, who share mid-West associations.
While it might be tempting to assume the titles were appended once the music was in the can, that’s not Smith’s custom. His compositional process, whereby he thoroughly researches his subject, before eventually choosing a specific event or moment on which to focus, suggests that the subjects play an integral part in the genesis of each piece. The outcome though is never programmatic and nor is there any pastiche of the honorees, the product remaining 100% Smith. So, there’s no obvious hint of the output of say the co-operative trio Air, which was one of Threadgill’s earliest outlets, in the piece dedicated to it, beyond the tightly coordinated ensemble work on show throughout the program, and no showboating by DeJohnette on the piece which namechecks him. The nearest things come to equivalence is in the zigzagging line which announces the “Pearl Symphony” first movement, which does perhaps coincidentally bring to mind dedicatee Anthony Braxton.
The four or five movements in each Symphony are generally free standing, purposefully structured, multi-sectioned works, showcasing Smith’s orchestral approach to the colors and textures at his disposal. His themes, usually relayed in unison by the horns, combine heraldic melody and monolithic blocks of sound, etched in a stately grandeur, but determined not to give up secrets easily. In the 2005 documentary The Art Of Improvisation, another of DeJohnette’s regular partners, pianist Keith Jarrett, posits in relation to his Standards Trio that with experience, simplicity becomes profound. It’s not a new insight as Leonardo da Vinci is reputed to have said something similar, but it applies in spades to the work of the Great Lakes Quartet. Smith and his crew achieve complex ends through unfussy means, seldom calling on extended techniques or virtuosic grandstanding. Solos tend to be pithy, like haikus, stripped down to better convey their essential emotional message, while at the same time seeming to fulfill a structural intent.
As ever Smith exhibits a magnificently poetic musical presence, aided by his longstanding practice of affording silence equal weight to sound. Elegant, and rarely hurried, he performs with controlled fire, his majestic annunciatory fanfares embrace a lyric blues-infused center, his tones shaded with subtle nuance of articulation and attack, expanded by his astute wielding of mutes or stirring quick fire exposition. Smith’s sound/silence duality finds echo in Threadgill’s creatively awkward phrasing. Often serene, spacious and poised, particularly on flutes, he pares back his ideas to their very core. On alto saxophone he can be keening and raw, a distinctive throaty squawk, but also affectingly plaintive and vulnerable as on the second movement of the “Diamond Symphony.”
Lindberg acts as the linchpin, whether with richly detailed coloring and punctuation, or locomotive motifs. His infectious riffs, like that on the inaugural movement of the “Gold Symphony,” often inspire Smith and Threadgill to some of their most emotive and dramatic statements. He and DeJohnette mesh as if Siamese twins. Their graceful pas de deux for bass and drums on the fourth movement of the “Pearl Symphony” is one of the highlights of the proceedings. Although DeJohnette enjoys few unaccompanied passages, notwithstanding his concluding soliloquy on the piece dedicated to Muhal Richard Abrams, in another sense he might be soloing continuously throughout. While attaining a tremendous range of timbres and feels through his treatment of percussion as a pitched instrument, he barely resorts to metric time, but his consummate playing, with each accent exquisitely placed, beveled with a jeweler’s eye, is yet one more of the joys of this outfit.
On “Sapphire Symphony – The Presidents And Their Vision For America,” saxophonist Jonathon Haffner, (an erstwhile associate of Bill Frisell, John Zorn, and Butch Morris), replaces Threadgill. Although in the first three Symphonies little thematic correlation is discernible, Smith reprises material between sections here, most especially the melody which closes the first movement and reappears in the fifth, albeit with a more dissonant edge, perhaps affirming the link between Lincoln and Obama. While Haffner may not match Threadgill’s guile (few do of course), he similarly buys into Smith’s concept, and acquits himself well in the service of the tunes, taking effective solos, particularly in the fourth movement which contains some of the most intense exchanges of the set.
For those convinced of Smith’s genius, and I’m unashamedly one, this characteristically lavishly presented collection from TUM Records is manna from heaven, and the stand out, to date, among his 80th birthday releases.
–John Sharpe
Wadada Leo Smith + Jack DeJohnette + Vijay Iyer
A Love Sonnet For Billie Holiday
TUM Records TUM CD 060
With A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday, TUM Records continues their celebration of Wadada Leo Smith’s 80th birthday following on the heels of the monumental 3-CD set of solo trumpet music, a set of duos and trios with Bill Laswell and Milford Graves, and a 4-CD set by Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet (also reviewed in this issue of PoD.) This release captures a trio session with frequent collaborators, drummer Jack DeJohnette and keyboard player Vijay Iyer. While Smith and DeJohnette didn’t record together until the 2000 debut release of Golden Quartet, their paths crossed in the late 1960s and again in the 1970s at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY. Iyer first played with Smith when he joined the trumpet player’s Golden Quartet in 2004 and the two have continued to collaborate since, in both duo and group settings. Smith assembled this trio with the express idea of leaving aside a bass player, allowing for more open voicings as the three navigated their way through the set consisting of two pieces by Smith, one each by Iyer and DeJohnette, and a final collective improvisation. The drummer’s extended kit expanded by a full range of percussion instruments and the keyboardist’s use of piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond B3, and electronics unites with Smith’s clarion trumpet playing, creating improvisations of sweeping collective range.
Smith has always reveled in the openness of trio settings, from his first recordings with Anthony Braxton and Leroy Jenkins, his trio in the 1970s with Anthony Davis and Wes Brown, trios with Bobby Naughton and Perry Robinson or Dwight Andrew, and a great, unsung collaboration with Vinny Golia and Bertram Turetzky. This time out, Iyer’s keyboards tend to fill out the group, making for a denser sound than some of those earlier outings, complemented by DeJohnette’s orchestral color choices and his propensity for undercurrents of simmering propulsion. Their sense of phrasing and momentum remains loose and spontaneous; a tribute to their cooperative sensibilities drawing on Smith’s concepts of ahkreanvention which the liner notes to the CD explain effectively. Each performer is considered as a complete independent unit with their own center. “The independence of each sound-rhythm and the independence of each performer contributes to the liberation from time as a period of development and to its employment as an element of space instead.”
The disc opens with Smith’s composition “Billie Holiday: A Love Sonnet” introduced by an extended drum solo with DeJohnette’s splashing cymbals and lithe tuned toms setting a relaxed cadence. Smith and Iyer come in and the pianist’s spare chords complement the drummer’s voicings with Smith’s immediately identifiable trumpet tone and pacing soaring across with clarion, free lyricism. Iyer’s “Deep Time No.1” follows with a more atmospheric sense colored by the electronic processing of a recording of Malcolm X’s “By Any Means Necessary” speech. Here, the three move in superimposed layers, bringing to mind the approach Teo Macero took to mixing In a Silent Way. The nuanced recording brings out the full timbral range of the instruments, from low electronic rumbles to ringing Rhodes to metallic percussion crashes and pings to Smith’s luxuriant trumpet tone.
Smith’s 18-minute “The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance opera (For Anthony Davis)” starts with a relaxed, free swing driven by Iyer’s stabbing piano playing and the drummer’s smoldering cross rhythms. Then the three musicians take off on autonomous tangents which spring off and then loop back to intertwine with an astute sense of collective arc. Iyer switches to electric keyboards mid-way through, coloring the proceedings with shimmering textures then cycling back to skewed angular acoustic piano, driving the piece to its conclusion in conjunction with DeJohnette’s chattering kit and Smith’s searing trumpet. The drummer’s “Song for World Forgiveness” is a solemn cry, buoyed by his elastic polyrhythms, the pianist’s lush harmonies, and Smith’s plangent, muted trumpet. The recording closes with “Rocket,” a concise, collective improvisation where the three players revel in chasing down a strapping groove with burly B3 organ, chattering drums, and spitfire trumpet loping along with laid-back verve. One hopes there will be more from this fortuitous matchup. For now, this document of their debut meeting is well worth spending some time with.
–Michael Rosenstein
Cecil Taylor
The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert at the Town Hall NYC November 4, 1973
Oblivion Records OD-8
In the early 1970s Cecil Taylor spent a little over three years teaching at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and Antioch College in Ohio. To mark his return to New York in late 1973, Taylor scheduled several events premiering the music he had composed while teaching, the first of which was a concert at Town Hall on November 4 with Jimmy Lyons, Sirone, and Andrew Cyrille. The Town Hall concert was produced and recorded by students at Columbia University, and over two-thirds of it is previously unreleased. Given the extreme 88-minute run time of the first piece, “Autumn/Parade,” it wasn’t logistically or financially possible at the time to release the music, and so it sat unheard for nearly fifty years. The final thirty percent of the concert was released as Spring of Two Blue-J’s in 1974 in a limited run on Taylor’s Unit Core imprint. While bootleg editions of the album are in circulation, this is the music’s first legitimate release since the original LP. Thankfully, streaming and digital formats provide the ideal means to listen to long, continuous tracks uninterrupted and without being marred by fade outs and ins, and so, the full concert – “Autumn/Parade” and Spring of Two Blue-J’s – is now available for the first time as a streaming and digital only release.
The notion that this concert is a “return” as the title indicates, might leave some to think this was Taylor and/or the Unit’s first appearance after a lengthy hiatus – that perhaps not being in New York meant that he was not productive; that perhaps the band had cobwebs in the rafters that needed clearing. Quite the contrary. In March of that year Taylor recorded the solo album Indent at Antioch College, which he released on Unit Core and which Arista subsequently reissued in 1977. Two months later, Taylor, Lyons, and Cyrille performed an explosive set in Tokyo, which can be heard on the hard-to-find (in physical form, anyway) Akisakila – Cecil Taylor Unit in Japan. A week later Taylor recorded a solo album in Tokyo. Needless to say, Taylor and his mates arrived in New York primed and in top form.
“Autumn/Parade” begins with Taylor and Lyons trading opening statements. Taylor alternates between his percussive left hand and lighter right hand melodic runs. As he will do throughout the evening, Lyons returns to his opening gestures and motives, mining them for every possible variation and permutation they can yield. He tests his ideas for their limits – just how far can he push them? Lyons’ quest to find out is unrelenting. It isn’t long before he is in a frenzy, with Taylor serving as his primary enabler. The music is now fully saturated in polyphony. Taylor’s thumping chords coming apart in shards. Cyrille continuing Taylor’s statements by translating them onto the kit. Sirone pulling notes out from the depths of his bass. At any moment, Taylor may turn away from his own train of thought to focus on one of Lyon’s lines, continuing and/or coopting it in the process. It is as if the quartet is on a merry-go-round spinning so quickly it’s nearly impossible for the four of them to hold on. While the bulk of the performance finds the quartet in near perpetual overdrive, there are two extended sections where some of the band lays out and yields to Taylor. The second, which comes in the piece’s final third, is the longest and meatiest. Cyrille and Sirone pull back ever so slightly and Taylor offers up so many notes, so quickly, from all ends of the keyboard. This fifteen minute section on its own could be half of a really good album. Upon Lyons’ return the band digs in again, with Lyons and Taylor engaging in a spirited debate that evolves into a game of tag. After more than an hour, how is their playing as intense, if not more so, than it was when they began? Finally at about the 80 minute mark, the band audibly seems to – and quite understandably given all that has come before – hit a wall. One wonders if Lyons didn’t wink at Taylor as if to say “my chops are done” as a signal to wind down and conclude the piece.
For the audience in attendance, it may have been hard to believe that after an hour and a half there was another forty minutes left to come. The remainder of the concert – released as Spring of Two Blue-J’s – consists of two parts that each took up one side of the LP: a stunning solo piano piece backed with a quartet performance. Hearing Taylor solo may be the best way to fully grasp his pianism and nearly unparalleled virtuosity. From his incredible dexterity and clean direct touch to his focused, pure tone, Taylor makes the piano sound like it has far more than 88 keys. Throughout, his left and right hands seem to be sparring each other – thrust and parry, bob and weave. His lines shift character at will, from single note flights to pounding left hand block chords, from angular geometries to forceful and blunt declarations, from stop-start phrases that can’t quite become unstuck to nimble scrambling. To listen to this music is akin to experiencing the New York subway at rush hour: scores of individuals moving in different directions, each with their own determined and focused pace, yet somehow moving together. Surely, each listener will find their own metaphor for this piece and way to make sense of it, but at its core, Taylor creates a dense environment, ever shifting and unceasingly dynamic. But it is not chaotic – it’s structured by larger patterns and logics as Taylor creates, discards, and reintroduces musical gestures.
The quartet piece opens with Taylor’s quiet, block chords, chiming through the hall. Once Taylor is settled, Lyons enters, with careful, measured lines. These gentle phrases evolve into a more forthright declamation that begins to fragment. Lyons continues to pursue every variation of his figures as possible, with Taylor filling in the gaps, and Cyrille pushing. If there’s one criticism to be made of the recording, it’s that sometimes Sirone can be buried in the mix. As the performance goes further and further afield from its original founding material, the intensity increases, the texture thickens, the lines lengthen, and Taylor finds new gears. While Lyons continues to work through some of his original ideas, Taylor introduces a new five note figure that serves to shift the perspective on Lyons’ material. Near the end of the performance the group begins to get quite frantic; they display a voracious appetite, attempting to play all the notes, looking everywhere, finding everything. At the height, Taylor and Lyons drop out nearly simultaneously, as if they both reached the point where they’d gotten as far as they could go taking that particular route. Sirone takes a rare solo, interspersing his big, clean, and occasionally bent notes with strummed chords. Taylor returns, playing a simple line, then repeating it and adding a small new flourished tacked on, and repeating and augmenting again, and again, each time the phrase appears with a new jewel or amendment, until that original small line has turned into something completely grand while still retaining the hallmarks of its humble beginning. Blink twice and miss a stunning transformation.
Throughout the evening, each piece had its own set of themes and motives running through it as connective tissue. They each showcase a full cast of characters with their own personalities and motivations who interacted with each other in unexpected ways. Like all of Taylor’s and the Unit’s large-scale performances, this concert tells a story of cinematic sweep. For the audience that night, hearing over two hours of music with such intensity and that communicated so much information, must have been both an invigorating and an overwhelming experience. Such a concert is a test of emotional, physical, and creative stamina, for musician and audience alike. For someone such as myself, who has an unhealthy tendency to become obsessively fixated on minutia and detail, this concert and the ways Lyons and Taylor kept returning to and never letting go of certain ideas, scratches that certain itch to look at a musical object or situation and find every possible outcome. This process of witnessing musicians engage in this discovery (even if it is nearly fifty years after the fact) will never get old, as it requires focusing on the moment while simultaneously stepping back to see how those individual moments fit into the whole. It requires a both/and perspective. And in that process one finds the means, or at least the possibility for finding the means, to gain insights into the relation between parts and whole, thought and expression, the fleeting and the permanent, the tangible and the transcendent.
–Chris Robinson