Ten Freedom Summers [SEP] record label
Ten Freedom Summers
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,
less enthusiastic about the box set, believing it would have benefitted from being released as four separate albums; listening to the entire record for him was "exhausting, but also involving and inspiring".
At the end of 2012, "Ten Freedom Summers" was ranked as one of the year's best jazz albums in lists published by AllMusic, "All About Jazz", "JazzTimes", and the "Chicago Reader". Bret Saunders from "The Denver Post" named it 2012's best jazz record,