Wadada Leo Smith's
Ten Freedom Summers

Defining Moments in the
History of the United States of America

Ten Freedom Summers is a large work inspired by the activity of the civil rights movement from The Niagara falls congress in 1905 and 1948, when President Harry S. Truman signed the Executive Order 9981 and up to
Dr. Martin Luther King's Memphis speech in 1968.

Over the years I thought that I would compose a tribute to the civil rights movement, centered in the activities of two decades 1948-1968, much in the same way that August Wilson's plays comment on ten decades of the African-American experience in America, but through musical composition/improvisation.

This musical work is the result of my research and reflection concerning the philosophical, social and political history of the United States of America. Ten Freedom Summers is programmed as three evenings of music, and is composed for Golden Quartet and Southwest Chamber Music, an ensemble of nine performers. The world premiere will take place October 28-30, 2011, at REDCAT at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California.

Medgar Evers: A Love Voice of a Thousand Years Journey, Liberty and Justice was completed in 1977, and is the earliest work in the collections.

John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and the Space Age completes Ten Freedom Summers cycle.

Five compositions were composed during my 2009/2010 Fellowship with the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Southwest Chamber Music commissioned four compositions, funded by the James Irvine Foundation and Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation.

Ten Freedom Summers was commissioned by Chamber Music America with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; and Southwest Chamber Music.

The work has three major collections;

• First Collection: Defining Moments in America
• Second Collection: What is Democracy ?
• Third Collection: Ten Freedom Summers
  

First Collection:
Defining Moments in America

1) America parts 1 and 2
2) Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democracy Party, 1964
(1-2 composed during Djerassi Foundation residency)
3) Emmett Till: Defiant, Fearless
(commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music with support from NEA and MAP Fund)
4) Rosa Parks, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 381 Days
5) The Freedom Riders Ride
6) The Washington D.C. Memorial Wall

Second Collection:
What is Democracy ?

7) Dred Scott: 1857: The Issuers of Immigration, Human Rights and who can be an American
8) Democracy
9) Buzzsaw: The Myth of the Free Press and Corporate Power

Third Collection: Ten Freedom Summers

13) Thurgood Marshall and Brown v. Board of Education: A Dream of Equal Education, 1954
14) Little Rock Nine: A Force for Desegregation in Education, 1957
15) Freedom Summer: Voter Registration, an Act of Compassion and Empowerment, 1964
(13-15 commissioned by Chamber Music America with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation)
16) John F Kennedy’s New Frontier and the Space Age, 1960
(commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music with support from NEA and MAP Fund)
17) Lyndon B Johnson's Great Society and The Civil Rights Act of 1964
18) Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.: Memphis, the Prophecy
19) Courage to Dissent, Forces for Change
(17-19 commissioned by Southwest Chamber Music with support from the James Irvine Foundation and Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation)