String Quartets Nos. 1-12

In 2021, Finlands 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 Smiths 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 modernisms 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 Smiths 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 Smiths 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 Smiths 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 Smiths 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