Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, now 4 score plus, is nothing if not prodigious. He just release a big boxed set of trumpet/drum duets, and still looking for new lands to conquer, takes up the pen as a sword for a series of string quartets performed by the rotating team of the Redkoral Quartet (Shalini Vijayan-Mona Tian/vi, Andrew McIntosh-Lorenz Gamma-Linnea Powell-Adrianne Pope/va and Ashley Walters/cel) along with guests Alison Bjorkedal/harp, Anthony Davis/p, Lynn Vartan/perc, Stuart Fox/g and Thomas Buckner/voc.
The first two discs are essentially modern string quartets, with moments of Britten and Bartok, with a mix of long t ones, and deep broodings on “String Quartet No. 1” and pizzicato’d musings with high pitched bows o ”String Quartet No. 3” Bjorkeda’s harp makes for a haunting solo on “”Movement 4” with a feel of Appalachia on “Movement 2”.
Smith joins with piano and percussion on the rumbling “Saif: Prayer in the Garden of the Hijaz” which sounds similar to Bartok’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste”. Fox’s guitar veers in and out of the strings on “Ten Thousand Ceveus Peruvianus Amemevical”. Smith returns with some bright horn and guttural vocals by Buckner on “Opuntia Humifusa” while Walters is rich on the meditative “Angela Davis: Into The Morning Sunlight”.
For the last three discs, the quartet has a late Beethoven feel on the jagged “ Shaikh Cerno Boka” and the somber “Sarah Bell Brown-Smith”, going into subtones on the dark and stagnant “Sarhanna Kabell Smith” and buzzing like bees for the choppy “Red Autumn’s Gold”. A viola quartet sustains tension on the sweeping “Billie Holiday” and sway like a seasick sailor on “Pacifica”. Definitely a stumper on a Jazz Blindfold Test, but actually pretty impressive for modern classical.