Wadada Leo Smith Visits 'America's National Parks,' Cuneiform Records [REVIEW]

With the release of the epic two-CD America's National Parks (Cuneiform Records), avant-garde trumpet man Wadada Leo Smith can officially be called his generation's Ornette Coleman. Although they play different instruments, there's a definite parallel between Smith's massive work about the natural resources of the U.S.-designated as the birthright of all Americans, like Yellowstone, the Mississippi River and Yosemite-and Coleman's sweeping 1972 Skies of America.

Both artists are visionaries. Coleman came out of Fort Worth Texas to usher in The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959. Smith came out of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Coleman won a 2007 Pulitzer. Smith was one of three finalists for a 2013 Pulitzer. This year he did win a Doris Duke Artist Award, an honorary doctorate from CalArts and a Mohn Award for Career Achievement.

Smith's longtime Golden Quartet-pianist Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Pheeroan akLaff-is joined by cellist Ashley Walters. Smith takes full advantage of the sonic possibilities of a cello/trumpet front line.

Opener "New Orleans: The National Culture Park" was written for that town's cultural history that has informed so much great American music. Over 20 minutes long, it's a somber celebration (check out the excerpt below) leading straight into "Eileen Jackson Southern, 1920-2002, A Literary National Park," named after the author of The Black Perspective in Music. With these first two tracks, Smith expands the vernacular of what constitutes American Treasures.

The final track on CD #1 ("Yellowstone"), for this first National Park, established in 1872, features cello/trumpet interplay of profound hit and runs. Smith and Walters spur each other on to heights as high as the Sequoia trees, among the largest and oldest trees in the world (the grandiose packaging contains portraits of the kind of magisterial beauty that has inspired him).

CD #2 starts with "The Mississippi River: Dark and Deep Dreams Flow..." The music is kinetic, rushing, splashing and almost stopping at one point (for contemplation at river's edge?). Over a half-hour long, it meanders here and there with the rhythm section flowing into it like a tributary. Oddly off-putting at first, its pleasures take getting used to. With the 15:23 "Yosemite: the Glaciers, the Falls, the Wells and the Valley of Goodwill 1890," the project closes on a celestial note, one of natural beauty but only if you can open your mind and put aside your preconceptions of meter, tempo, rhythmic thrust and melody. Smith lives on a different plane. As the late singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen used to say, "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." Smith works well in life's in-betweens.

TagsWadada Leo Smith, Ornette Coleman, REVIEW, Cuneiform Records