America’s National Parks (Cuneiform Records)
Wadada Leo Smith
Released October 14, 2016
2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Top 10 Best New Album
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https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kz74R_ZSTtT-E5vuksQ8J9Zta1L-nRHZs
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With America’s National Parks, visionary composer and Wadada Leo Smith offers his latest epic collection, a suite inspired by the scenic splendor, historic legacy, and political controversies of the country’s public landscapes. Writing for his newly expanded Golden Quintet, Smith crafts six extended works that explore, confront and question the preserved natural resources that are considered the most hallowed ground in the U.S. – and some that should be.
America’s National Parks was released shortly before Smith’s 75th birthday in December, arriving, coincidentally, in the midst of celebrations for the centennial of the National Park Service, which was created by an act of Congress on August 25, 1916. The spark for the project, however, came from two places: Smith’s own research into the National Park system, beginning with Yellowstone, the world’s first national park; and Ken Burns’ 12-hour documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.
trumpeter six-movement”The idea that Ken Burns explored in that documentary was that the grandeur of nature was like a religion or a cathedral,” Smith says. “I reject that image because the natural phenomenon in creation, just like man and stars and light and water, is all one thing, just a diffusion of energy. My focus is on the spiritual and psychological dimensions of the idea of setting aside reserves for common property of the American citizens.”
His 28-page score for America’s National Parks was penned for his Golden Quintet, a fresh reconfiguration of the quartet that’s been a keystone of his expression for the last 16 years. Pianist Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Pheeroan akLaff are joined by cellist Ashley Walters, affording the composer and bandleader new melodic and coloristic possibilities. “The cello as a lead voice with the trumpet is magnificent,” Smith says, “but when you look at the possibilities for melodic formation with the trumpet, the cello, the piano and the bass, that’s paradise for a composer and for a performer.”
While these preserved landscapes offer the inspiration of powerful natural beauty, Smith’s always open-minded view of the world leads him to find that same inspiration wherever he is. “Every concrete house is from nature,” he says. “Every plastic airplane that flies 300 people across the ocean comes out of nature. Every air conditioner conditions a natural piece of air. I think that the human being is constantly enfolded in organic nature and constructed nature, so I’m constantly inspired, inside the house or outside the house.”
Track Listing:
1. New Orleans: The National Culture Park Usa 1718 20:57
2. Eileen Jackson Southern,1920-2002: A Literary National Park 9:38
3. Yellowstone: The First National Park and the Spirit of America – The Mountains, Super-Volcano Caldera and Its Ecosystem 1872 12:14
4. The Mississippi River: Dark and Deep Dreams Flow the River – a National Memorial Park c. 5000 BC 31:07
5. Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks: The Giant Forest, Great Canyon, Cliffs, Peaks, Waterfalls And Cave Systems 1890 6:46
6. Yosemite: The Glaciers, the Falls, the Wells and the Valley of Goodwill 1890 15:23
Personnel:
Wadada Leo Smith: trumpet, director of the ensemble
Anthony Davis: piano
Ashley Walters: cello
John Lindberg: bass
Pheeroan akLaff: drums
Recorded on May 5, 2016 and mixed by Nick Lloyd at Firehouse 12 Recording Studio, New Haven, CT
Mastered by Gene Paul at G&J Audio, Union City, NJ
Art and Yosemite National Park photography by Jesse Gilbert
Package design by Bill Ellsworth
Review:
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith has a feel for the epic in his art, on recordings like: America (Tzadik Records, 2009), a duet set with drummer Jack DeJohnette; “America’s Third Century Spiritual Awakening,” from his first Golden Quartet (Tzadik Records, 2000) outing; Occupy The World (TUM Records, 2013), with the Finish big band, Tumo; The Great Lakes Suite (TUM Records, 2014), and his massive four disc master work, Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform Records, 2012), inspired by America’s civil rights movement.
He continues in that vein with America’s National Parks, featuring another reconfiguration and expansion of his finest musical vehicle, The Golden Quintet—a small increment expansion of the revolving door ensemble, the Golden Quartet, with the addition of cellist Ashley Walters.
Smith’s nod to the National Park system is a loose take on the subject matter. There’s Yellowstone and Sequoia/Kings Canyon, and Yosemite, but the interpretation of “National Park,” in Smith’s mind, is flexible. He includes in the category New Orleans, the Mississippi River and Eileen Jackson Southern, the African-American musicologist and founder of the The Black Perspective in Music.
The music here is measured, often minimalistic, often somber in its reverence. And it is deeply bleak and funereal, interspersed with segments of frantic anguish on the riveting masterpiece-within-the-masterpiece: the half hour long “The Mississippi River: Dark and Deep Dreams Flow the River—a National Memorial Park c. 5000 BC.” The Mississippi: a waterway that Smith calls: “a memorial site which was used as a dumping place for black bodies…I use the word “dark” to show these things are buried or hidden, but the body doesn’t stay hidden; it floats up.” [Smith’s quote is taken from the disc’s liner notes by Shaun Brady].
This ensemble sound is what every bandleader aspires to but rarely achieves. Anthony Davis— better known as a classical player/composer, and the pianist on the first Golden Quartet (Tzadik Records, 2000) configuration, as well as the band’s Year Of The Elephant (Pi Recordings, 2002)—injects his off-center, idiosyncratic elegance to the sound. John Lindberg, Smith’s bassist of choice for The Year Of the Elephant (Pi Recording, 2012) and the trumpeter’s duet partner on Celestial Weather (TUM Records, 2015), provides deep rhythmic grooves and dark backdrops. Drummer Pheeroan AkLaff is a flexible groove master/colorist, textural-ist of the highest order; and Ashley Walters’ cello paints the rich, beautiful hues that subtly enhance the entire proceedings—the most auspicious addition to a jazz ensemble since Chico Hamilton brought the instrument into his chamber groups in the late 1950s.
And then there’s Wadada Leo Smith: his trumpet, open horn, sounds like the voice of a celestial prophet, singing a message to the seeker on the mountain-top. Muted, he’s a benevolent spirit of an earthbound netherworld, speaking esoteric-but-undeniable truths. Wrap these sounds together inside the vision of Wadada Leo Smith and you have a seductive and captivating and transcendent ninety minutes of music.
Disc 1’s opener on this two CD set, “New Orleans: The National Culture Park USA 1718,” throbs to life on a resonant seven note bass riff from John Lindberg. The ensemble sound paints a picture under dark, roiling clouds. Smith’s brush doesn’t render the Big Easy a celebratory, bon ton roulet type of place. Perhaps he envisions the floating bodies in the Mississippi drifting down to the Crescent City, silent witnesses to America’s original sin, on this starkly beautiful twenty-one minute dirge.
Wadada Leo Smith, in the middle of his seventh decade now, has created a body or work that qualifies him as one of America’s artistic geniuses, in a league with Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis. A visionary. America’s National Parks, along with virtually every recording he has released in the new millennium, confirms it.
Dan McClenaghan (All About Jazz)
