Wadada Leo Smith reflecting on the approach of his 80th birthday (photograph by Dominik Huber)
Exactly one week from today, the highly inventive trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith will celebrate his 80th birthday. In preparation for this event, his “house label,” the Helsinki-based TUM Records, released two new albums a little less than a month ago. One of these, The Chicago Symphonies, consists of four multi-movement symphonies that Smith composed, each filling a single CD. The other is a single CD entitled A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday. This is a trio album bringing Smith together with Vijay Iyer on a variety of different keyboard instruments and Jack DeJohnette on percussion. The album consists of five tracks, the first of which is the “Love Sonnet” that Smith composed. Composition duties are shared by all three of the performers on the remaining four tracks.
Each of the four symphonies is performed by a quartet, and each is named after a precious substance. For the first three of the symphonies (“Gold,” “Diamond,” and “Pearl”), Smith is joined by Henry Threadgill on winds, John Lindberg on bass, and DeJohnette on drums. Lindberg and DeJohnette also perform the final symphony (“Sapphire”); but the fourth member is saxophonist Jonathon Haffner. All but the second symphony consist of five movements. “Diamond” has only four.
Other than having a multi-movement structure, there is little that is “symphonic” about these four pieces. Rather, taken as a whole, the collection amounts to a “memory book,” providing a framework through which Smith could reflect on both his influences and the activities that emerged from those influences. As one peruses the movement titles, one encounters reflections on the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the influences of Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. However, the “Gold” symphony also reaches back to the years prior to Smith’s birth, reflecting on Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Lil Hardin Armstrong, and Baby Dodds.
Nevertheless, reflection is not a matter of citation. All of the music is very much Smith’s own. If there are any explicit citations associated with the names that arise in the movement titles, they may very well be little more than engaging accidents. Only in the final symphony does Smith shift from musicians to two historical figures. The “Sapphire” symphony is the only one with a subtitle: “The Presidents and Their Vision for America.” Only two of those presidents are cited. The first two movements address Abraham Lincoln, while the last two evoke Barack Obama. Since this is a five-movement symphony, the middle movement brings the two of them together under the title “The Visionaries.”
While all four of the symphonies may be described as “historically inspired,” there is no attempt to structure the movements according of the narrative of that history. I prefer to think of the full cycle as a sort-of “acoustic museum,” each of whose “rooms” provides an “exhibit” of some aspect of Smith’s past. The listener is then free to make his/her/their own decisions about how to approach (or, for that matter, interpret) each of those exhibits.
The Love Sonnet album, on the other, is not so much “about history” (to the extent that any of the music is about anything) as it is a meditation on an “encounter” between past and present. My guess is that the first impressions of listeners to the opening track, Smith’s “Billie Holiday: A Love Sonnet,” will be DeJohnette’s extended solo percussion work before either of the other two musicians are allowed to “say” anything. I came away wondering whether or not Smith was being a bit prankish, because I do not think I have ever listened to a Holiday track in which the drums come to the foreground! On the other hand, those with a robust acquaintance with the Holiday discography will probably recognize at least some of the “micro-motifs” in Smith’s trumpet work that can be tracked back to tropes from Holiday’s songbook.
Smith’s other contribution as a composer has the longest title on the album: “The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance opera (For Anthony Davis).” Davis is about two month’s shy of being a decade younger than Smith. However, he appeared as pianist on seven of Smith’s albums.
His real interest, however, has been the composition of operas on African-American themes, such as X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X and The Central Park Five. This would explain the significance of the title of Smith’s composition. Unfortunately, I am not familiar enough with any of Davis’ operas to tell, one way or the other, if Smith’s treatment of Davis involves the sorts of “micro-motifs” encountered in his reflection on Holiday. More interesting to me is the extent to which Iyer’s work with electronics provides a composition more palatable than what I have encountered in just about all of his piano performances.
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