WeFreeStrings: Love in the Form of Sacred Outrage

Founded in 2011 by violist-composer Melanie Dyer, WeFreeKings (the name a riff on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “We Free Kings”) shapeshifts from a sextet with Dyer, violinists Gwen Laster and Charles Burnham, cellist Alex Waterman, bassist Ken Filiano, and drummer Michael Wimberly on the opening and closing pieces, down to the trio of Dyer, Laster, and Filiano on the two middle tracks. Both alignments are radical departures from any conventional jazz or chamber format, and Dyer’s three compositions are equally rebellious: a 25-plus-minute, six-movement suite named for the late writer Amiri Baraka, the title track dedicated to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, and “Propagating the Same Type of Madness, that uh…” for assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton. The music wheels, sweeps, and soars. The bowed strings voice bitterness, rumination, and exultation and veer from whispers to screams, from quiet conversations through passages of swing to orchestral swells. Filiano works the bottom end busily, and Wimberly, although a bit recessed in the mix, adds rattles and rumbles that broaden the colorful panoramas. For all the spirit of protest, there is much sweetness here, too, especially in the way the trio caresses the delicate structures of Baba Andrew “The Black” Lamb’s “Pretty Flowers.”