BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Music: Jazz & Blues

Music: Jazz & Blues: Jazz

Celebrating the best contemporary jazz, with exclusive concert recordings and features

From free jazz to fusion, post-bop to electronica – Jazz on 3 celebrates the music as a living and developing art form, with exclusive concert recordings and in-depth features

Jazz on 3: Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers

Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers

11/08/2014

BBC Radio 3 - Jazz on 3, Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith performs Ten Freedom Summers at London's Cafe Oto.

Jez Nelson presents trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and his Golden Quartet performing pieces from his work Ten Freedom Summers at London's Cafe Oto.

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith performing pieces from his work Ten Freedom Summers at London's Cafe Oto.

Ten Freedom Summers is seven hours of music inspired by the Civil Rights Movement. It's less of a suite in the traditional sense, more of a collection of compositions that Smith curates into different groupings according to mood and moment. Rigorously composed, but with plenty of room for free improvisation, pieces like Rosa Parks, Emmet Till and March On Washington provide a starkly dramatic signpost to key events and personalities in the struggle. It's an ambitious work, but one which rewards the listener with passages of extraordinary power and beauty, Smith's trumpet variously evoking the raw energy of the gospel preacher, the cut-glass quality of Miles Davis and the gnomic utterances of Sun Ra.

After first broadcasting part of this performance in January, Jazz on 3 was inundated with requests for more - and this programme completes the set with previously unheard pieces. Smith's Golden Quartet featuring Anthony Davis on piano, John Lindberg on bass and Anthony Brown on drums is accompanied by the strings of the Ligeti Quartet.

Presenter: Jez Nelson
Producer: Miranda Hinkley.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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