WADADA LEO SMITH Rosa Parks: Pure Love

Acclaimed trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator Wadada Leo Smith has released an oratorio of seven songs inspired by the iconic civil rights leader Rosa Parks. In his own words, Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs is "concerned with ideas of freedom, liberty and justice, a meditation centered around the civil rights movement." Looking at Smith's more than 50 years of creative and artistic vision, this release is yet another inspired organic musical direction that has established him as one of the leading composers and performers of contemporary music. 

With this personal homage, Smith is taking himself and his audience on another musical and spiritual journey, making discoveries with sparse instrumentation, solo vocalists, spoken word, and historical video presentation, with live performances scheduled for 2019. This tribute to Parks beautifully mixes a world of exceptional vocal parts between African American Karen Parks, Min Xiao-Fen from China, and Carmina Escobar from Mexico. These ethereal voices are accompanied by the strings of the RedKoral Quartet and the Blue Trumpet Quartet of Smith, Ted Daniel, Hugh Ragin, and Graham Haynes. Drummer Pheeroan AkLaff joins on drums and electronic music is provided by Hardedge. With minimal instrumentation, Smith continuously conveys the spiritual narrative of Parks's extraordinary and fearless actions that, in Smith's words, "generated a movement worldwide for liberty and justice for human beings." 

Although making demands of the listener's attention on each of the seven songs, Smith delivers the sum of the parts, utilizing the full range of emotion available in instrumentation and vocals. The titles elicit Parks's feelings as she makes her journey, with headings such as "Resistance and Unity," "Defiance, Justice And Liberation," and "Postlude: Victory!" Smith's compositions reveal a contemplation of sounds evoking the full range of Rosa Parks's humanity. (Doug Hall)

Lyris Quartet INTIMATE LETTERS

Leoš Janáček’s Second String Quartet, Intimate Letters, inspires four complementary new works by Billy Childs, Bruce Broughton, Peter Knell and Kurt Rohde in an inventive new recording by the “radiant” (Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles-based ensemble. On September 30, ARS will release The Lyris Quartet’s Intimate Letters, an inspired new project anchored by the Second String Quartet of Leoš Janáček, “Intimate Letters”. Janáček’s Intimate Letters holds a special place in the repertoire of the Los Angeles-based Lyris Quartet; having been the first work that the group performed publicly and one they return to most often. So it is fitting that the piece serve as catalyst for the ensemble’s first recording. Often referred to as the composer’s “manifesto on love”, Intimate Letters was inspired by Janáček’s near obsessive devotion to his longtime muse Kamila Stösslová (a married woman 38 years his junior) to whom he wrote more than 700 love letters over 11 years.

The Lyris Quartet – Alyssa Park (violin), Shalini Vijayan (violin), Luke Maurer (Viola) and Timothy Loo (cello) – are known as faithful champions of new music and are the resident ensemble of the celebrated new-music series Jacaranda in Santa Monica. The Quartet chose to present Janáček’s storied quartet together with four new works inspired by the piece and commissioned for the Lyris by distinguished Los Angeles composers Bruce Broughton, Billy Childs, Peter Knell, and Kurt Rohde.

To ensure the recording breathes original life into Janáček’s masterpiece the Lyris brought this cross-genre and and multi-media roster of composers - together, asking each to write a work in response to the original Intimate Letters. The result is a dazzling homage to Janáček’s most ardent quartet.