The Chicago Symphonies

Composer/trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has been recording for TUM Records, Finlands premier vanguard jazz label, since releasing the orchestral work Occupy the World in 2013. A year later, he released the sprawling Great Lakes Suites, performed by his Great Lakes Quartet (Smith on trumpet; Jack DeJohnnette, drums and percussion; John Lindberg, double bass; Henry Threadgill, saxophones and flutes). TUM has spent 2021 commemorating Smiths 80th year with archival and new releases. November 2021 saw the release of the trio offering A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday with DeJohnette and pianist Vijay Iyer, and The Chicago Symphonies, performed by two editions of the Great Lakes Quartet. The Chicago Symphonies were inspired by Don Cherrys 1966 album Symphony for Improvisers for jazz sextet. Smith used it to write music, intended to illustrate and preserve the powerfully unique cultural contribution that the Midwesterners made in helping to shape the American society. The four-disc box set contains a disc for each multi-movement symphony. Smith explores longer musical forms by employing varying themes and motifs for his sidemen to interact with, explore, and improvise on. Each movement focuses on a different persona, theme, and/or creative expression. In the first movement of Gold Symphony, he offers a tribute to pianist, composer, and singer Amina Claudine Myers. His muted horn and Threadgills alto saxophone exchange song-like statements with ticking, double-timed cymbals and rim shots from DeJohnette. The Ornette Coleman-esque lyricism in the second movement for the Art Ensemble of Chicago is appended by a glorious pizzicato solo from Lindberg as horns bleat urgently. In Diamond Symphonys first movement, Smith offers a spacious, haunting tribute to Air, the historic vanguard trio Threadgill played in with Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. Its final movement acknowledges the harmonic and rhythmic contribution of DeJohnette and the various bands hes led. In each section Smith directly references ghost traces of the blues as thematic material. Pearl Symphony offers separate, abstracted tributes to the various musical considerations of Anthony Braxton and Leroy Jenkins, his collaborators in Creative Construction Company. The knotty opening section with Smiths and Threadgills striated counterpoint outlines the theme as bassist and drummer engage in stop-and-start cadences underscoring each pass before the symphony explores poets, Sun Ra, Phil Cohran, and Smiths own Ten Freedom Summers across bubbling solos, duets, trios, and quartet engagements. The final Sapphire Symphony places alto saxophonist Jonathon Haffner in Threadgills chair. Subtitled The Presidents and Their Vision for America, it moves across vanguard jazz and postmillennial classical schema in exploring tones, overtones, and modes with post-bop, free improv, and even jazz-funk. The quartets interplay between in the fourth movement is as startling as it is imaginative. Its conceivable The Chicago Symphonies could possibly benefit from the extra textures an orchestra provides, but Smiths compelling writing, combined with the seamless intuitive interaction of this small group, illustrates a magnificent musical language that remains unfettered in its creative potential despite its intense focus. ~ Thom Jurek