Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022
Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.
Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.
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A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday<br />
Wadada Leo Smith; Jack DeJohnette; Vijay<br />
Iyer<br />
TUM Records TUM CD 060<br />
(tumrecords.com)<br />
The Chicago Symphonies<br />
Wadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet<br />
TUM Records TUM Box 004<br />
(tumrecords.com)<br />
! Wadada Leo<br />
Smith is one of the<br />
most important<br />
artists of his generation.<br />
Although functionally<br />
a trumpeter,<br />
his real instrument<br />
is his far-reaching<br />
compositions, the<br />
artistry of which is subsumed in worlds that<br />
are aural and visual. Moreover the eloquent<br />
narratives that propel the elasticized rhythmic<br />
units that make up his iconic Ankhrasmation<br />
Symbol Language are so intensely and<br />
eloquently poetic that a literary dimension<br />
may also be ascribed to his musical art.<br />
Smith rose to eminence when he became a<br />
very early member of the Association for the<br />
Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM),<br />
founded in Chicago by Muhal Richard<br />
Abrams. Then, with reeds master Anthony<br />
Braxton and violinist Leroy Jenkins, Smith<br />
began to create music that soared, outward<br />
bound. It began with his concept of rhythm<br />
units born of a belief that every musician<br />
participating in a musical excursion was a<br />
singular inventor in the congregate setting of<br />
ensemble music. This led to a musical canon<br />
that grew spectacularly with every new work.<br />
More than 50 albums later and celebrating<br />
his 80th year around the sun, Smith has led<br />
various ensembles to produce three new<br />
releases – the 3-CD solo Trumpet, Sacred<br />
Ceremonies with Milford Graves and Bill<br />
Laswell (reviewed by Ken Waxman in The<br />
WholeNote Vol.<strong>27</strong>/1) and the 4-CD The Chicago<br />
Symphonies with Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet<br />
included below – plus a single album that<br />
brings together drummer Jack DeJohnette and<br />
pianist Vijay Iyer in a unique collaboration<br />
titled A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday.<br />
Each of the members of this latter trio<br />
brought pieces to explore during this musical<br />
encounter. The uniqueness of Smith’s art<br />
is in what might be referred to as the small<br />
print – the intimate moments that only a<br />
genuine artist understands and has the ability<br />
to inspire in others. We experience majesty<br />
in his The A.D. Opera: A Long Vision with<br />
Imagination, Creativity and Fire, a dance<br />
opera (For Anthony Davis). Iyer’s Time No.1<br />
and DeJohnette’s Song for World Forgiveness<br />
are also impressive. Throughout the album<br />
phrases are tellingly placed, every colour<br />
skilfully applied, whether with a subtle<br />
smudge of the thumb or the bolder stroke of<br />
the brush.<br />
The Chicago Symphonies box set comprises<br />
four separate<br />
extended works of<br />
epic length. Each<br />
symphonic work<br />
is unique; Black<br />
History lessons<br />
told in song. The<br />
significance and<br />
matchless nature<br />
of each orchestral<br />
work expresses the birth pangs and often<br />
painful nature of the African-American in<br />
history from Lincoln to Obama, steeped –<br />
and expressed – in the Blues. It is impeccably<br />
performed by Smith with Jack DeJohnette and<br />
Henry Threadgill, a titan of music expressed<br />
in woodwinds and reeds, together with<br />
bassist John Lindberg. Saxophonist Jonathon<br />
Haffner replaces Threadgill on Symphony<br />
No. 4. Each work is rendered with ruminative<br />
prayerfulness and unforced rhetoric. You’ll<br />
hear throughout – especially on Symphony<br />
No. 2 – the kind of textural complexity, intuitive<br />
pacing and abstract brilliance of melody,<br />
harmony and rhythm, grounded in piercing<br />
sunbursts of luminosity, that takes your<br />
breath away.<br />
Raul da Gama<br />
…and then there’s this<br />
Artifacts: Tomeka Reid; Nicole Mitchell;<br />
Mike Reed<br />
Astral Spirits AS129<br />
(astralspirits.bandcamp.com)<br />
! The musical<br />
density and raw<br />
vibrancy, of the<br />
work by Artifacts<br />
– cellist Tomeka<br />
Reid, flutist Nicole<br />
Mitchell and<br />
drummer Mike<br />
Reed – often sounds<br />
as if it has sprung into being from a point<br />
before time as we know it, as well as from a<br />
future way beyond time. It evokes elemental<br />
human or natural forces from the rhythm of<br />
the natural world, sculpted in short and long<br />
inventions, by the joyously pendulous swing<br />
of time.<br />
…and then there’s this owes much to being<br />
formed in the Association for Advancement<br />
of Creative Musicians. Black to the Future<br />
Afrofuturism is in the spine of the trio’s<br />
wondrously dark, vivacious musical palette.<br />
Homage is duly paid to Muhal Richard<br />
Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell on Soprano<br />
Song and No Side Effects. The rest of the<br />
music comprises originals by the trio – Reid,<br />
Mitchell and Reed – and is made in the<br />
melodic, harmonic and rhythmic image of<br />
gleanings from (to coin a phrase) the Tao of<br />
AACM, But each song embodies the unique<br />
personality of the composer and the collective<br />
Reid’s voice is loose, joyously effusive, and<br />
redolent of soaring pizzicato leaps and capricious<br />
arco shrieks. Mitchell’s is magical, more<br />
tightly informed but with a similar depth of<br />
feeling and abounding in contrapuntal vigour<br />
and strange harmonies. Reed is a percussion<br />
colourist par excellence, tempering the rattle<br />
of drum skins with provocative hissing of<br />
cymbals. In Response, Blessed and Pleasure<br />
Palace are the album’s high points.<br />
Raul da Gama<br />
POT POURRI<br />
Some Comfort Here<br />
Charlotte Moore; Mark Camilleri<br />
Independent (open.spotify.com/<br />
album/0BnDapG1mPFfKfCUZhwLfI)<br />
! If, like me, you<br />
know Charlotte<br />
Moore as one<br />
of Canada’s top<br />
musical theatre<br />
performers, this<br />
new album is a<br />
fun window on<br />
another side of<br />
her performing personality. And yet, though<br />
the songs are more pop than theatre, they<br />
still display her signature ability to get to the<br />
essence of a song – making it seem she is<br />
making up both words and music on the spot.<br />
The intimacy created by this ability is<br />
inviting and the choice of often wistfully<br />
melancholic songs of love and friendship<br />
from Joni Mitchell’s Help Me (I think I’m<br />
falling in love again) to Tom Waits’ Rainbow<br />
Sleeves and Old Friend (from the musical I’m<br />
Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the<br />
Road), is cathartic listening material after<br />
almost two years of living through this seemingly<br />
unending pandemic.<br />
Moore also lets loose in a couple of much<br />
more lighthearted jazzy numbers that suit<br />
her voice brilliantly: Chantal Kreviazuk and<br />
Raine Maida’s 2006 hit All I Can Do, and<br />
the 1932 classic Hummin’ to Myself (Sammy<br />
Fain et al).<br />
Moore’s voice is at its best when relaxed in<br />
her lower register where tears and laughter<br />
can hover near the surface. When she aims<br />
higher into a belt her voice loses some of its<br />
rich quality and yet the very rawness of this<br />
“almost live-to-tape” recording of Moore’s<br />
voice backed by the masterful piano of Mark<br />
Camilleri is attractive and pulls us into the<br />
mix offered up of tears, hope and laughter.<br />
Jennifer Parr<br />
Canadiana<br />
Canadian Brass<br />
Linus Entertainment <strong>27</strong>0596<br />
(linusentertainment.com)<br />
! One of the most<br />
iconic instrumental<br />
ensembles<br />
in Canada has<br />
just released its<br />
tribute to fellow<br />
Canadian musical<br />
54 | <strong>February</strong> <strong>2022</strong> thewholenote.com