Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers - Austin

Ten Freedom Summers is performed by Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet and RedKoral String Quartet with video images by Jesse Gilbert.

This performance, presented in collaboration with The New Quorum and Nameless Sound, is supported by Presenter Consortium for Jazz, a program of Chamber Music America funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Epistrophy Arts is supported by individual contributions and by the City of Austin Cultural Arts Division of the Economic Development Department

“I was born in 1941 and grew up in segregated Mississippi and experienced the conditions which made it imperative for an activist movement for equality. I saw that stuff happening. Those are the moments that triggered this. It was in that same environment that I had my first dreams of becoming a composer and performer.” – Wadada Leo Smith

“A staggering achievement, with the dramatic sweep of the trumpeter’s writing (for both a chamber orchestra and his own small group)… It merits comparison to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in sobriety and reach.” — Francis Davis, Rhapsody Jazz Critics Poll

“Ten Freedom Summers is his magnum opus; it belongs in jazz’s canonical lexicon with Duke Ellington’s Black Brown & Beige and Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite.” — Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

“Five stars. Although there are many outstanding recordings in Smith’s canon, it’s hard to avoid calling this his masterpiece.” — Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine

“A master at uttering profound truths with bracing dissonance, stripped-down musical gestures and striking contrasts of instrumental color, Smith presided over music of searing expressive power. Even if you didn’t know that “Ten Freedom Summers” grapples with our nation’s struggles over civil rights, this music conveyed tremendous visceral and intellectual impact.” – Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune

“There are ambitious works, and then there is trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s Ten Freedom Summers… The sound is never less than widescreen. You won’t find any vamp sessions or alternating solos in Smith’s interpretation of jazz – like the history he’s reprising, it only moves forward.” — Otis Hart, NPR

“Ten Freedom Summers is one of my life’s defining works.” – Wadada Leo Smith