In 2021, Finland's
TUM Records expanded their decade-long relationship with composer/trumpeter
Wadada Leo Smith. They commemorated his 80th anniversary with an exceptional series of boxed sets and other releases covering various aspects of his creative career. These included the three-disc boxes
Trumpet (solo) and
Sacred Ceremonies (duos and a trio with
Bill Laswell and
Milford Graves), the four-disc
Chicago Symphonies (performed by his all-star
Great Lakes Quartet), and
A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday (in trio with
Jack DeJohnette and
Vijay Iyer).
TUM concludes its celebration with
The Emerald Duets (five discs of collaborations with various drummers), and this seven-disc box comprised of his first 12 string quartets performed by the
RedKoral Quartet with select guest soloists. It is the first time
Smith's string works have been collectively recorded. He conducts these pieces and plays trumpets on Nos. 6 and 8.
"String Quartet No. 1" (1965-1982) is in four movements. Its first reflects the weight of classical modernism's influence, yet he all but sheds it all in the second, as freer rhythmic conceptions take hold. The third movement finds cello and viola dialogically pairing before the violins add another communicative dimension. By contrast, "String Quartet No. 2" (1969-1980) is a single movement that equates elongated single notes, chordal drones, plucks, and scrapes in a unity of sober tonal interrogations and wry humor. "String Quartet No. 3 - Black Church: A First World Gathering of the Spirit" (1995) juxtaposes
Smith's deeply idiosyncratic approach to formalism with disruptive free passages and controlled silences before achieving synthesis. Harpist
Alison Bjorkedal guests on "String Quartet No. 4" (1987-2000), adding exponentially to its collision of the dramatic and the pastoral in threading intricate polytonal queries through harmonic sonorities. Disc three offers three shorter works including "String Quartet No. 6 - Taif: Prayer in the Garden of the Hijaz" (2007). It features
Smith on trumpet, longtime collaborator
Anthony Davis on piano, and percussion by
Lynn Vartan. While
Smith's compositions set up linear relationships between
RedKoral Quartet and its collaborators, they also involve intimate conversation between its members and the soloists, and between the soloists and one another. Of particular note is a dialogue between
Davis and
Vartan at four minutes, introduced and concluded by
Smith. The nine-movement "String Quartet No. 11" (1975-2019) comprises all of discs five and six. This labyrinthine work very gradually articulates the import of some of
Smith's influences, including
Paul Dukas,
Claude Debussy,
Dimitri Shostakovich, and
William Grant Still. It elegantly glides across and blurs them in advanced, highly original expressions of theory about musical color, timbre, dissonance, and overtones. The set concludes with the relatively brief, emotionally resonant "String Quartet No. 12" (2016-2018), scored for four violists. This box is a singular and essential entry in
Smith's catalog. These works constitute the vastest articulation yet of his endlessly complex, ever-evolving Ankhrasmation musical system, which joins rigorous composition to the union of improvisation and creative instinct. ~ Thom Jurek
