| Ten Freedom Summers | ||||
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| Live album and box set by | ||||
| Released | May 8, 2012 | |||
| Recorded | November 4–6, 2011 | |||
| Venue | Zipper Hall (Los Angeles) | |||
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| Length | 273:48 | |||
| Label | Cuneiform | |||
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| Wadada Leo Smith chronology | ||||
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Ten Freedom Summers is a four-disc box set by American trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith. It was released on May 5, 2012, by Cuneiform Records. Smith wrote its compositions intermittently over the course of 34 years, beginning in 1977, before performing them live in November 2011 at the Colburn School's Zipper Hall in Los Angeles. He was accompanied by the nine-piece Southwest Chamber Music ensemble and his own jazz quartet, featuring drummers Pheeroan akLaff and Susie Ibarra, pianist Anthony Davis, and bassist John Lindberg.
A mostly classical work, Ten Freedom Summers comprises 19 pieces that are often fully developed as suites. They abandon conventional themes in favor of abstract expressions of the titles, which reflect the Civil Rights Movement and other interrelated topics. Smith cites the segregation of his native Mississippi and playwright August Wilson's The Pittsburgh Cycle as inspirations behind the work. Ten Freedom Summers received widespread acclaim from critics and was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013.