SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SUMMER/FALL, 2017
VOLUME FOUR NUMBER THREE
ESPERANZA SPALDING
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
JAZZMEIA HORN
(August 12-18)
ROY HAYNES
(August 19-25)
MCCOY TYNER
(August 26-September 1)
AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE
(September 2-8)
AARON DIEHL
(September 9-15)
CECILE MCLORIN SAVANT
(September 16-22)
REGGIE WORKMAN
(September 23-29)
ANDREW CYRILLE
(September 30-October 6)
BARRY HARRIS
(October 7-13)
MARQUIS HILL
(October 14-20)
HERBIE NICHOLS
(October 21-27)
GREG OSBY
(October 28-November 3)
AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE
(b. May 1, 1982)
(b. May 1, 1982)
Ambrose Akinmusire, “a thrilling young trumpeter and astute bandleader [with a] unique spark in his playing” (The New Yorker), brings his artistic vision to the next level with the imagined savior is far easier to paint, his second release for Blue Note Records. The album follows his acclaimed major label debut When the Heart Emerges Glistening, which New York Times critic Nate Chinen named his #1 album of 2011, Akinmusire takes a more compositional turn on the imagined savior…, writing 12 of the 13 tracks and producing the album himself.
While Akinmusire continues to feature his extraordinary working quintet with tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown, he also broadens his palette by enlisting guitarist and fellow Northern California native Charles Altura. In addition, Akinmusire unveils gripping new collaborations with the OSSO String Quartet and flutist Elena Penderhughes, as well as vocalists Becca Stevens, Theo Bleckmann, and Cold Specks.
However, these encounters with strings and voices don’t at all diminish the central role of Akinmusire’s quintet, now edging toward a sextet with the addition of Altura. It’s awe-inspiring to hear the band’s energy and focus as it confronts every challenge in “As We Fight (willie penrose),” “Vartha,” “Bubbles (john william sublett)” (inspired by tap-dance legend John Bubbles), and “Richard (conduit),” a 16-minute-plus closing epic recorded live at Jazz Standard in New York City.
Also, while Akinmusire’s virtuoso trumpet is still very present on the imagined savior…, it coexists in a larger sonic framework than before. “Composition is what I’ve been focusing on the last few years,” the trumpeter says. “I want to be able to write a song and not have it need improvisation”
Reflecting on his penchant for long and poetic album titles, Akinmusire comments: “I don’t think I’ve been able to make an album yet where one word can capture the whole vibe. Maybe eventually I will. Right now I’m drawing from so many different parts of myself, and things that are outside of myself, that it’s hard to just have one word that says, ‘This means this.’”
Akinmusire continues: “The last album was about me — about things that I was experiencing and trying to change or accept about myself. The inspiration for this album is things outside of myself: people that I know, documentaries that I’ve watched, characters that I’ve made up.” Indeed, many song titles on the imagined savior… have a name attached in parentheses, and some of these reflect Akinmusire’s practice of creating elaborate storylines and fictional characters as an inspiration for his writing. On the imagined savior… he took this in a new direction, giving each of his guest vocalists a sketch of an idea and allowing them to create their own lyrics based on that idea.
The results are astonishing, beginning with Becca Stevens’ performance on her original “Our Basement (ed)”: centered by a pulsing heartbeat of a tempo, Stevens’ words and eerie unfolding harmonies mesh with Akinmusire’s quintet and the Osso String Quartet together in a complex and beautiful arrangement. The lyrical inspiration is “ed,” a homeless man on Akinmusire’s block who managed to save a couple hundred dollars to give back to the church that feeds him on weekends.
Theo Bleckmann, without question an innovator in vocal performance, met Akinmusire at the famed music workshop in Banff, Alberta. “We were on faculty and we played a Kate Bush song,” Akinmusire recalls. “After we played we looked at each other and I was like, ‘Ok, we have to work together.’” The resulting “asiam (joan),” featuring Bleckmann with the quintet, is inspired by Joni Mitchell — specifically, Michelle Mercer’s portrait of “Joan” in her 2009 book Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell’s Blue Period.
“Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child (cyntoia brown)” — dedicated to the imprisoned young woman at the heart of the documentary The 16-Year-Old Killer — features the dramatic “doom soul” vocals of Cold Specks, the Canadian-born, London-based singer-songwriter. “I’m a huge fan of hers,” says Akinmusire. “In June I did this tribute to Joni up in Toronto. I wrote [Cold Specks] an email asking her to be on my album, and she wrote back saying she was just about to invite me to be on her album.”
Along with the vocal tracks, there are two additional pieces with string quartet and flute, “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits” and “inflatedbyspinning.” The former stems from Akinmusire’s influences outside of jazz: “I’m really into people like Arvo Pärt, people whose compositions tend to evolve slowly. They’re adding and taking things away in a way that you don’t notice until a certain amount of time has gone by. It’s really hard with jazz instrumentation in a quintet format to get that sort of sustain.”
With “inflatedbyspinning,” Akinmusire captures a daydream: “I had an image of women standing on a cliff spinning. One was holding a red balloon, and at the start of the spinning the balloon wasn’t inflated, but when the spinning stopped, it was inflated.” Raghavan’s broad-toned arco bass supplements the strings and flute here.
In a loose parallel to “my name is OSCAR” (dedicated to the late Oscar Grant) on his previous album, Akinmusire offers “Rollcall for Those Absent” as an overt statement on “a certain reality that you can't deny that goes on here in America and in the world: this fear of black men that causes a lot of sad stories.” The instrumentation here is wholly different from the rest of the album: Harris plays the melody on mellotron while Akinmusire plays chords and bass notes on Juno synth, and Muna Blake (the young daughter of drummer Johnathan Blake) reads aloud the names of numerous people killed by police — or by vigilante action, as in the prominent case of Trayvon Martin. “Having a young voice read the names, it’s like the beginning of life talking about the end of life,” Akinmusire says. “I wanted to capture that. In the same way, sounds that are really high and really low are like the beginning and the end.”
* * *
Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ambrose Akinmusire (pronounced ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) was a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble when he caught the attention of saxophonist Steve Coleman. Akinmusire was asked to join Coleman’s Five Elements, embarking on a European tour when he was just a 19-year-old student at the Manhattan School of Music. After returning to the West Coast to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, Akinmusire went on to attend the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles, where he studied with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Terence Blanchard.
In 2007 Akinmusire won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, decided by a panel of judges that included Blanchard, Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove. That year Akinmusire also won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and released his debut album Prelude…To Cora on the Fresh Sound label. He moved back to New York and began performing with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding and Jason Moran. It was also during this time that he first caught the attention of another discerning listener, Bruce Lundvall, President of Blue Note Records.
Akinmusire’s Blue Note debut When The Heart Emerges Glistening was released in 2011 to rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times praised his “chameleonic tone that can sigh, flutter or soar,” adding that “Akinmusire sounds less like a rising star than one that was already at great heights and just waiting to be discovered.” DownBeat described his playing as “spectacular and not at all shy — muscular, driving, with a forward sound, pliant phrasing and a penchant for intervallic leaps,” concluding that “clearly something very special and personal is at work here, a vision of jazz that’s bigger than camps, broader and more intellectually restless than blowing sessions.”
https://jazztimes.com/departments/interview/ambrose-akinmusire-upholding-tradition-breaking-decorum/
6/02/2017
By Lee Mergner
Ambrose Akinmusire:
Upholding Tradition & Breaking Decorum
A conversation with the creative jazz trumpeter about his musical life and career
Ambrose Akinmusire Photo by Pierrick Guidou
The trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire was raised in the musically fertile Bay Area along with many other notable jazz players such as Jonathan Finlayson, Dayna Stephens and Justin Brown. Signed to Blue Note Records in 2010, he released his debut album for the label, When the Heart Emerges Glistening, in 2011 and the imagined savior is far easier to paint in 2014. His newest album is a live session – A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard – that features his working band of Sam Harris (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Justin Brown (drums). He also performs with the Blue Note All Stars featuring Marcus Strickland, Lionel Loueke, Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge and Kendrick Scott. In addition to touring with his own group throughout the summer and fall, Akinmusire will perform with the Blue Note All Stars on the Blue Note at Sea cruise in January 2018.
*****
Lee Mergner: You grew up in the Bay Area and it really was such a formative time and place for you. Do you feel that your upbringing in that area shaped you? And if so, how?
Ambrose Akinmusire: That is definitely true. The one thing that I would probably elaborate a little more on is the shaping coming more from the streets—more from the local musicians who were around than the actual programs that are in the Bay area. There are some great programs that I was a part of, but most of the programs I just met these local heroes in and that’s where the real mentorship started to take place.
Who were some of those mentors?
Eddie Marshall. Another great drummer was E.W. Wainwright, a piano player named Ed Kelly who passed away, a great trumpet player named Khalil Shaheed. My main mentor was a guy named Robert Porter, who mentored a lot of people around here, like Teodross Avery and Benny Green, [who] had some of his first gigs with him. And Donald Bailey, the drummer who used to play with Jimmy Smith, was around and he had a jam session that he would get us to come to. He would take us aside and tell us stories about the borough and about music and all these other things. Bobby Hutcherson was also around. Joe Henderson was around. Jeff Chambers. Herbie Lewis, the bass player. Marcus Shelby. All these guys are around and there were also a lot of great places to play when I was in high school. In a normal week, I had maybe anywhere from three to six gigs, as a teenager with cats that were really high level. So it was really kind of as close to mentorship, or at least mentorship back in the day, as it could be in the ’90s.
Berkeley High School was a great place for me to be around likeminded younger musicians, sort of like an incubator. There was another program called the Young Musicians program that was a summer program up at Cal where you did really formal training. There was a choir in the morning that sang classical choir pieces, and you had classical theory and at the end of the day you had a jazz band. And a lot of musicians went through that—Dayna Stephens, who was also at Berkeley High School with me, Jonathan Finlayson, Charles Altura, Justin Brown…
It’s interesting how jazz can’t just be a formal education. It probably can’t also just be the informal gigging.
That’s the way it seems. But I don’t know if that’s any different from the way it used to be. For me, when I think of formal training I don’t necessarily think of [being] in an institution. I think maybe sitting around a piano with Monk was equivalent, or as close as they could get to an institution. And when someone says, “I learned on the streets,” I’m thinking they literally just sat out there and played on the street.
With the Blue Note at Sea cruise, you’re performing with the Blue Note All Stars. One of the challenges of an all-star group is how to make it a real band.
That’s a great observation and a great question. To be super honest with you, the only reason I am doing this Blue Note one is because I feel like it is a band. Everybody in that band, we all grew up playing together in New York. We used to play at the Jazz Gallery in different configurations. I’ve done gigs with Lionel, Robert and Kendrick before. These were the guys that were at the jam sessions. Robert did my senior recital before any of this stuff. When they first had the idea of us doing it [Blue Note All Stars] in Monterey, I was like, “Oh, yeah, that’ll be cute.” But it really felt like old times, when we used to play at the Jazz Gallery. And none of this other stuff mattered.
You’re with the Blue Note label and have been with them from the beginning. Have you felt the weight of the label’s legacy?
I don’t know if I feel the weight of much related to music because I don’t believe that it’s me that’s creating it. But am I aware of the rich history and do I go out of my way to remind myself of these things when I start to feel like I’m estranged from it? Yes, I do. In my bathroom I have two Blue Note books. So I’m like, “Oh shit, wow … Clifford Brown … Lee Morgan … wow.” Do I feel like I’m in a line or like I’m directly connected to them? Yes, I always feel that way. And I’m trying to do my best to uphold that tradition. To me that means sometimes [bucking] up against the decorum. Because to me that’s what Blue Note was always about. That’s the Monk. That’s the Blakey. That’s the Wayne. That’s Blue Note. Blue Note wasn’t about fitting in. I guess you had the Lou Donaldson and things like that on the record label, but I don’t feel like those were the ones that were really the defining thing of Blue Note. And so, even up to Jason Moran and Greg Osby.
Did you get to know Bruce Lundvall who was the head of the label for so many years?
I was the last person that Bruce signed actually. So Bruce was very important to me. I can’t see myself signing with a major label if it wasn’t for Bruce. Because I didn’t know what I was going to create, but I definitely wasn’t willing to have somebody who was not an artist tell me what to do. If it hadn’t been with Bruce I wouldn’t have signed with anybody, or no major at least.
How do you think your composing has developed over the years?
For me [with] composition, whatever I’m checking out in my everyday life is what I’m checking out compositionally. And it took me a long time to realize that. Now in my everyday life, I’m thinking about time and form and details. And I think all those things are things that are being developed in my composing. I’m being super aware of what’s happening over a certain span of time, and of the things that are repeating in it. And how, when they come back to you, how you’re dealing with them or not dealing with them. It’s just like in life when you’re constantly confronted with the same problem over and over. Some people, either they don’t recognize it or they run away from it. And in composition, I have a rule where: if it comes back, you have to deal with it. And change it to be something different. Otherwise you’re just kind of repeating, like “Groundhog Day” or something. I think that’s how my composition has changed from the first album. I think before I was just going with the vibe, just writing, or maybe just thinking about dealing with those elements in the improv, not necessarily in the composition. But now I’m trying to put that in the composition, because I’m dealing with that in my everyday life.
What is your creative process for writing? Do you have to be alone or do you have to walk out into the world?
I think for me, it’s not so much what the process is as what does that process get to me, or where does it get me. I think that usually gets me into a state of submission. There’s a bunch of things that I do, or I can do, to get into that state. It can be meditation, it can be the things that you said—going for a walk—it can be turning off my phone for a few hours, it can be eating ice cream. Whatever it is that allows me to get into that state where I’m ready to submit to this thing that’s higher than us. And then that thing comes through to you, and then your job—just like when you’re improvising—is just to make sure you have enough understanding and enough technique to write it down as quick as possible. And sometimes submission means getting rid of your ego, or what it should be or what it shouldn’t be, or what it is or what it’s not. Is this jazz? You know, all of that stuff. That gets in the way of the submission. The end result of the process is submission, but the process itself varies for me. I think that’s the healthiest way, at least for me, because you’re not judging yourself. And I believe the same thing about my playing. And so when someone says, “Oh man, that’s the most amazing album I’ve ever heard,” or “Oh, that’s the shittiest album,” I say, “Well, great. Thanks.” And I really believe it. I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve convinced myself of it, but I really do believe that this stuff comes from something higher than us. When we all die, this shit will still be here.
Your new album, A Rift in Decorum, is a live record, recorded at the Village Vanguard. What was the reason that you chose that over going into the studio?
There are so many reasons. I think that a statement has been made that there are young musicians that are playing creative music that are intelligent in 2017 who are also getting attention from establishments—like, real, validated establishments like the Village Vanguard. It’s hard for me to really talk about it without saying people’s names, but there are a lot of young musicians that are watching us. And they may have been discouraged in the last few years by some of the things that have gotten attention. And I would like to be able to say, “No, just stick to your guns and be creative and investigate things, and you can also be on Blue Note and develop a band of creative musicians and play at the Vanguard and do things that you’ve always valued. Or keep those dreams. Or be in line with the history.” So there’s that.
There’s also that when we first signed with Blue Note, Bruce’s idea was for us to do a live record. He said, “Look man, this band is too great for you to put it in the studio. You guys are a band. So you guys should just do a live record.” And it wasn’t for any money, we had already negotiated the budget. He said, “People need to hear what this sounds like live.” And, to be honest, after the first record, I recorded a live record at the Jazz Standard but through negotiations it took too long. And by the time we were ready to put out an album, it was already a year and I felt like I was already kind of over that kind of music. So it’s all those things. It’s to sort of take a snapshot of where the band is and what we’ve got. And also to sort of make a statement against the decorum of today. It’s like a lot of people are making albums to be successful, or for a Grammy, or to be a part of this thing that they think is popular right now. And I just wanted to make a statement that you don’t have to do that, and you can just be who you are and still be loved and still get some attention, if it’s all about that for you, which it’s not for me.
I was really touched by the story behind the first tune, “Maurice and Michael (sorry I didn’t say hello).” Would you mind telling the story behind that composition and its title?
This is just one story. There are other stories I have about friends of mine. But this particular story is about this guy named Maurice who had a brother who was my age. Maurice was actually one year younger than me. And we grew up on literally the same block—we played football and baseball together, and we went to the same elementary school. We even grew up playing hide and seek together at like 6 or 7 years old. And they went to Catholic school, and they went to private school, and all that other stuff. And they were good kids. They went to church every Sunday, and so on. A lot of stuff started to change once I went to high school. Because I went to Berkeley High School, and a lot of my friends had to stay in Oakland. And Oakland schools, at least during this time, most of them weren’t as good as surrounding districts. If you got caught up in that, then you had a lot more obstacles in front of you that you had to deal with than going to Berkeley High School or going to these other high schools that were a lot better. They didn’t end up going to Berkeley High School. That means that we started to grow apart. And I didn’t see them for years.
Then, just maybe three or four years ago, when I was the composer-in-residence at the Monterey Jazz Festival, I was coming down out of Carmel—that’s where the residency takes place, in this beautiful thing overlooking the ocean. I had to do a private benefit at SFJAZZ, and I was taking a BART [train] back to wherever I was going, and I saw Maurice. He was sitting, maybe three or four rows behind me, and I was staring at him and I was like, “No, it can’t be Maurice.” He had his head down and was nodding off or whatever. And then he stood up and I said, “Oh shit, that’s Maurice.” And my first reaction was to say something to him, but it was almost like I hit a wall. And I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t. And he walked past me, stumbling, and his eyes were red and his clothes were dirty and then he got off the train. And when the doors closed, I was like, “#$@%, man.” I was just in a weird mood for a very long time. It’s hard. It’s a complex thing, because you can’t arrive at an answer, you’re just like, “Why?” The thing that I did arrive at was that I definitely should have said hello.
It’s kind of like when you know someone who’s had a death close to them and you don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything.
Yeah, you just don’t say anything. Exactly. But that really [messed] me up. That’s the tune I wrote that night when I got back up there. But that story is so common in my life. I had this one guy—Jonathan Finlayson—so we grew up together, and we were in middle school together, and there was a guy named Ramon Burns. And he played piano, he played jazz before any of us, and he was amazing. He was already checking out Herbie Hancock and all of that. He was really dealing, even in seventh grade. And, again, they didn’t let him into the Berkeley school districts and Ramon ended up going to the local high school and he ended up selling drugs on the corner. I remember I came home once in college and Ramon had been jumped on the corner. And almost lost his life. And I was just thinking that this one decision … the only reason that that’s not my story is that my mom fought for me to go to Berkeley High School. This kid was really talented. There are kids that I hear now getting full scholarships to colleges in New York that weren’t on this guy’s level at seventh grade. Now he’s just trying to survive in Oakland.
You have done a lot of work with spoken-word artists as well as vocalists. Do you enjoy that aspect?
I don’t see it as them seeing the music differently, because when I’m collaborating with someone I always try to leave room for someone to insert something into it. So I don’t arrive at anything, so I don’t see it differently. But I do love the process of collaboration, and I do love the human voice, and I do love words. And I hope to do more of that in the future.
And tell me about your band, because you’ve been working with many of the same people for a while.
Right after we recorded When the Heart Emerges Glistening, Sam joined the band. We never toured that record with Gerald [Clayton] after it was recorded, even though Gerald is on the album. Harish [Raghavan] is on the album and he plays with a lot of people. Sometimes he plays with Vijay [Iyer]; sometimes he plays with Eric Harland; he played with Charles Lloyd recently. I’ve been playing with Justin Brown since high school, I’ve been playing with Sam since college, and Harish since I was in the Monk Institute. We’ve done hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of gigs now together. So we really know each other on and off the bandstand. And the thing I love the most about them—everybody in the band—is that we’re always investigating things. So when we get together, everybody’s just always at a different place. We’re always growing. Sometimes in different directions, but that’s part of growth too.
Getting along is a big part of what makes a band work.
I used to tell people, “Man, I can’t be in a band with anybody who wouldn’t fight with me off the bandstand.” Like, we’re gonna fight on the bandstand, and we need to be able to fight off the bandstand. And in order to do that, you definitely have to have some sense of camaraderie or friendship or love for each other.
Have you ever done a cruise before?
No, I’ve never done a jazz cruise before. But I’ve heard many stories and experiences of people who’ve gone and done them. But I don’t have any expectations. I’m just excited to play the music. It’ll be cool to just experience something that I haven’t experienced. For me the focus is just the music. But, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
What music have you kind of rediscovered lately?
Lee Morgan, because I went and saw that documentary last week. It was great for me, even to hear him talk. I had never heard him talk and to be reminded that, oh yeah, he died at 33. Like we talk about Clifford Brown and Booker Little, who were 25 and 23 when they died, but at 33, Lee Morgan [had done] a hell of a lot of stuff. I went back and checked out some of his stuff. I’ve always been checking out Lee Morgan. But after seeing that, I guess I’m checking it out with a different perspective. Or with a renewed perspective I would say.
The trumpet is a very unforgiving instrument. Is that true for you? The physical aspect of it?
You’re asking the million dollar question. How do you deal with it? You just jump in there and try to deal with it. I’m up every morning sharing technical stuff, trying to address that part. I’m on the phone with other trumpet players. This morning, I just sent Sean Jones a text asking about this tonguing thing that I’m having problems with. That’s kind of the beautiful thing about the trumpet and trumpet players is that there is a community, because we’re all dealing with the same shit: the horrible reality of not only who invented this instrument, but who decided to improvise on this? Just playing the instrument—I don’t want to say it’s easy, but that’s a manageable task. But to improvise, you’re changing air speed and embouchure and coordinating that with your fingers, but in the moment. It’s not like you know what’s coming. You’re reacting. Man, it’s impossible. It’s like figure skating but only on the tip of the figure skates. It’s damn near impossible to really improvise on this instrument. So you deal with it by practicing every day.
Could you leave it for a couple days?
No, I can’t. I tried it once. My girlfriend convinced me to take a vacation to Puerto Rico when I was like 21 or 22. And I said, “OK, sure. Great! Maybe you’re right.” And I didn’t play for a week. It took me a good six or seven months to get to a place where I felt like, OK, now I can start to rebuild my chops. Yeah, it’s horrible. So I don’t skip days. And anybody who says that they do, I always just kind of look at them sideways, like, “OK. Well …” But it’s also a beautiful thing, man. That’s one of the reasons why I love the trumpet, because from the first few notes of a trumpet player you can tell how serious they are. You can tell if they’ve been practicing, because the first thing to go is your sound. And then your dexterity, and then your range, and all these other things. I like that it weeds out people who aren’t that serious. You can’t casually play trumpet and get away with it. I figured that a guy like Clark Terry was practicing up until the end. You know, Woody Shaw. These guys did it. Who the hell am I to be taking breaks?
Akinmusire will perform with the Blue Note All Stars on the Blue Note at Sea cruise in January 2018.
Tell us a bit about your musical background
Ambrose Akinmusire
(b. May 1, 1982)
Artist Biography by Matt Collar
Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is a forward-thinking musician with a bent toward atmospheric post-bop. Born in Oakland, California, Akinmusire showed early promise in his teens, and gigged professionally while also playing in the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble. Early encounters with such luminaries as saxophonists Joe Henderson and Steve Coleman pushed Akinmusire to focus a keen eye on his own development. He earned his Bachelor's degree from the Manhattan School of Music and later his Master's from the University of Southern California. Along the way, Akinmusire studied with such trumpet luminaries as master teacher Laurie Frink, Lew Soloff, and Terence Blanchard. Akinmusire has appeared as a sideman on many albums, including works by saxophonist Coleman, pianists Aaron Parks and Vijay Iyer, trombonist Josh Roseman, bassist Esperanza Spalding, and others. In 2007, Akinmusire won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. A year later he released his debut solo album, Prelude to Cora, on Fresh Sound New Talent.
In 2011 Akinmusire returned with his sophomore album, When the Heart Emerges Glistening, on Blue Note Records. He then made session appearances on records by a wide array of artists, including David Binney's Graylen Epicenter, Chris Dingman's Waking Dreams, Baptiste Trotignon's For a While, and Gerald Clayton's Life Forum. His sophomore Blue Note date, The Imagined Savior Is Easier to Paint, was released in March of 2014. The following year, he contributed to rapper Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and joined Marcus Miller on the bassist's Grammy-nominated Afrodeezia. In 2017, Akinmusire returned with the ambitious, two-disc concert album A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard.
The SPCO's Liquid Music
Dealing with the Invisible: Interview with Ambrose Akinmusire
January 25, 2017
by JP Merz
Jazz trumpet virtuoso Ambrose Akinmusire is known for his "unfurling lines that confound expectation" (Chicago Tribune) and the "strong aesthetic compass" (The New York Times) that guides his compositions. On Wednesday, February 15, Akinmusire premieres his latest project, Origami Harvest, at Amsterdam Bar & Hall in Saint Paul, commissioned by the SPCO's Liquid Music and Kaufman Music Center's Ecstatic Music Festival. Origami Harvest features rapper Kool A.D. and the Mivos Quartet alongside pianist Sam Harris and drummer Marcus Gilmore.
“Music has always been more of a religious experience for me, you know, dealing with the invisible. ”
Tell us a bit about your musical background
I was born and raised in Oakland, California. My dad is from Nigeria and my mom’s from a small town in Mississippi. My dad came to Oakland in his mid-20s and my mom when she was a teenager. Both of them come from religious families. It’s hard for me to give a musical background without giving the background of my parents and their religion. Music has always been more of a religious experience for me, you know, dealing with the invisible. I started on piano in church and then started playing trumpet in church. When I think about the images from my upbringing I have these soundtracks from that time. The music that was being played in the cars or at church or on the radio. These things kind of play in my head when I think back to these images from my childhood. So that’s what got me into music, just things that I was seeing and hearing.
What were some of those soundtracks?
A lot of gospel. Just black music. A lot of hip hop. A lot of funk. Every Sunday my mom would play the Aretha Franklin amazing grace concerts. After we went to church, that record would be on all day. Or James Cleveland, Bobby Bland. My mom listened more to blues and gospel and my dad listened to Nigerian music like King Sunny Ade and Fela Kuti. Growing up, I was listening to all of that and hip hop. So when I went to a jazz camp in 8th grade I was just like ‘oh ok this is just like the stuff I’ve been hearing just played on instruments’. It wasn’t like “now I’m playing jazz.” Jazz has never been this separate thing from black music for me because I was saturated with it as a kid. When you think of blues or black gospel music or hip hop these things are obviously black and come from the black experience. I didn’t really have the “normal” kind of American introduction into jazz.
Turning towards this project, Origami Harvest, what sounds are being evoked and what does the title mean for you?
With this project I was kind of thinking… I hate the word mashup... but that’s what this is. I was thinking what if I were able to play a bunch of stuff from iPod all at the same time...what would that sound like? It would be this! We have some electronics, some jazz, some classical, some hip-hop and all kind of melting into each other, forming new shapes that are also impermanent. And that’s why I like the word harvest. Harvesting is circular there’s the off season and the on season, you keep going and going and there’s no arrival. And then I have this image of kind of slowing folding papers and collecting them... Music is really like a crop... now I’m just getting very vague but that’s how I think about it. But I do think this is a beautiful time in music. A lot of people like to talk about genres or “crossing over” but I think if you look at what New Amsterdam is doing or Kendrick Lamar or lots of people in jazz... it’s like everybody’s erased genres. They’ve erased these boundaries of where you can and cannot go and what can be considered jazz or hip hop or classical. I think this is a great time for this type of project.
“You’re not just trying to play all of the ‘right’ notes, you’re considering the ‘right’ notes and the ‘wrong’ notes.”
How do you navigate working with musicians from different musical backgrounds in an improvisational setting?
I think now in 2017 it’s hard to find musicians that don’t improvise. Not everyone needs to know how to play a jazz standard like Cherokee in all twelve keys to improvise. Not to get too cliche or deep but we as humans are evolving and evolution is improvising. You can’t really evolve without going into the unknown. I think that in order to make music now, the music of this time, improvisation is something you have to understand.
On your last album, The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint you also worked with a string quartet, what feels different or new about this time with the Mivos Quartet?
On my last album, there were certain things I was trying to address. I went through this long period of trying to address the lack of sustain in jazz. Most “jazz” instruments can’t sustain a note for very long. Drums, Piano, Bass, Guitar, even trumpet can’t sustain for very long. So I thought, what about having strings to sustain the note for a very long time. Or having Theo Bleckmann layering his voice on a loop pedal. I wanted to create an album that almost never had a silent moment. So that’s what I was dealing with on that album sonically. With Origami Harvest it’s very different, especially with a string quartet like the Mivos Quartet. When I think of Mivos, I don’t think of them as a group there to sustain. I think of them as a rhythmic machine, a living organism.
How has working with Victor Vazquez (Kool A.D.) shaped this project?
Victor is from Oakland as well so we’ve known each other for a very long time and have a lot of mutual friends. We’ve always kind of been one step away from working with each other… I think now at this point in my life and my career I try to surround myself with musicians and people who are willing to present all sides of themselves because then you can deal with honesty and actually have a real conversation. In 2017 with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the media, it’s very tempting to only present the good sides of yourself. But I like people who are just as comfortable with the ugly sides of themselves as they are with the beautiful sides of themselves both in their craft and socially. And I think Victor embraces that in his lyrics and his life. I think once you get to that level in an improvisation setting, the possibilities are limitless. You’re not just trying to play all of the “right” notes, you’re considering the “right” notes and the “wrong” notes.
Has anything in this project surprised you along the way? Or not gone as you anticipated?
No because I don’t anticipate things. The way I’m dealing with music as I get older is that I’m just here as a scribe, just writing things down. I’m not trying to shape to be any one particular thing. So there is no surprise but it is all discovery. It’s just what is coming out, there’s no judgement there’s no preconceived ideas. There’s a bit of editing with instrumentation and sonics. I’m not usually surprised by how things turn out. But on the other hand I’m always very surprised because I didn’t know anything about the music beforehand.
Is there anything else you’d like the audience to know before the show?
Not really. For this project, I feel like I’m in the audience as well because of the way I’m dealing with the music. Sure, my name will be at the top of the composition but the music doesn’t belong me, music doesn’t belong to anyone. Music will be here, it was here before all of us were born and when we die it will still be here. We are just here to serve the music. So I have just as much insight as the audience and I’ll be experiencing as they experience it.
The world premiere of Ambrose Akinmusire's Origami Harvest is Wednesday, February 15, 7:30pm at the Amsterdam Bar and Hall. Co-commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music and Kaufman Music Center's Ecstatic Music Festival.
Information and tickets can be found at: http://www.liquidmusicseries.org/akinmusire/Ambrose Akinmusire review – dramatically gripping, heartfelt jazz
4 / 5 stars
Pizza Express Jazz Club, London
The Californian trumpeter leads his quartet in a fierce elegy for African Americans killed by police in an electrifyingly expressive set
The Guardian (UK)
Next time somebody asks you to describe your feelings, maybe playing them the most apposite clip of an Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet solo might cut to the chase if you’re struggling for words. Akinmusire, the prizewinning 33-year-old musician from California and one of the most expressive and articulate trumpeters in any kind of contemporary music, is on a two-night stopover at the Pizza Express Jazz Club with his long-running quartet.
This quietly self-possessed innovator merges and reshuffles the familiar separate elements of conventional jazz – short tunes, long solos, climactic drum breaks – into suite-like extended pieces, but they change in mood and dynamics so much that they feel like contrasting scenes in a play.
Roll Call for Those Absent, triggered by recent African-American deaths at police hands and a spoken-word piece on Akinmusire’s new album was a dramatically gripping instrumental here, unfolded by the leader in translucent long sounds and squeezed-valve elisions, and transformed by a fierce drum soliloquy from Justin Brown that was such a stark contrast as to border on the traumatising. Gracefully pealing trumpet figures, stuttering uptempo lines and a sultry glide of swing unleashed a roller-coaster of music delivered with such conviction that when it fell silent for Harish Raghavan to produce a fragile, pure-pitched bass solo, the sense of anticipation seemed only heightened by the possibilities of what might happen next. Brown opened a new sequence with drum-hits like fireworks popping, Akinmusire played long, arching lines over an undertow from the rhythm section and imaginative pianist Sam Harris that had the cohesiveness of a single instrument, followed by a pulsing repeated trumpet note like a car horn, impassively resisting the intensifying buffeting of the drums.
In an onstage interview with broadcaster Tina Edwards, Akinmusire quoted Maya Angelou on the subject of compliments: “Don’t pick them up, and don’t lay them down.” His determination to be his own man, whatever the world’s chatter says, makes him the remarkable musician he is.
Life + Times
Composer Ambrose Akinmusire Speaks On New Album, Creating Characters, Oscar Grant & Trayvon Martin
3.11.2014
MUSIC
In many of Ambrose Akinmusire’s compositions, characters – both real and fictional – are the source of inspiration. Thus, each record is a story within itself. On his last album, the critically acclaimed When The Heart Emerges Glistening, this manifest itself in compositions like “My Name Is Oscar,” a tribute to Oscar Grant who was killed in Oakland just a few minutes from where Akinmusire grew up. On his newest album, the imagined savior is far easier to paint (out today), fictional characters Akinmusire created as well as the real-life tragedy of Trayon Martin, serve as the impetus and his trumpet leads the way.
“I do that just because I think that helps the form of the song, it helps the song lift off the page a little bit more,” he says. “Not that it’s easier for me to compose, but I definitely have more tools to work with.” With the help of a stellar supporting cast – tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harrish Raghavan, drummer Justin Brown and guitarist Charles Altura – the imagined savior is a dark and deliberate work. Here, Life+Times talks with Akinmusire about his latest album, character creation, and how Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant influence his music.
Life+Times: The album title the imagined savior is far easier to paint: what does that mean and how did you decide on that?
Ambrose Akinmusire: Usually when I create an album or composition, I start with the title first. I write a story then I kind of sum up the story in a title. With this one, it was a little different. I came up with the musicians and the compositions and the characters before I came up with the title. I wrote about 40 or 50 titles down on paper and I kind of summed them up. That’s how I got this title. For me, the title doesn’t mean one specific thing. I feel like it’s a poem, I want it to be interpreted in as many ways as possible. I don’t want tell people what they should or shouldn’t feel. A lot of times a title can do that, and I think with this album, there are so many ways things can be interpreted, so I wanted to leave it more open.
L+T: So for you, how do you interpret the title?
AA: I can’t [laughs]. I don’t want to put it out there because then people will catch a hold of it and say, “Oh, this album is about that.” I can just tell you I always try to have my album titles have something to do with where I’m at in my life. Right now, I’m just working on being better human being, starting to try to focus more on some other roles that I may have neglected in my life. A lot of musicians just focus on being great musicians, and they don’t realize the different roles that are in their lives can actually help them. So, I’m just focusing on being a better son, a better friend. I’m really trying to figure out how to be there for people, how to be more in tune with nature, and be more of an artist as opposed to just a great musician. That’s where I’m at in my life right now and I think that’s also in the title. Sort of looking within yourself as opposed to looking for someone else for the answer.
L+T: You said creating this album and selecting the title was a different process than it has been in the past for you. Talk about that different approach and the overall tone. It seems like a darker record.
AA: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I just wanted to focus on being an artist and create something that could be looked at as a piece of art. From your first interaction with it – the photos, the title – I want it to feel like you’re on a journey, and it represents what’s going on now. A hundred years from now, I want someone to be able to pick up the album and look at it like, “Damn, that reflects 2014.” I feel like music and art in general – if you see JAY Z – is going to this area where everything is everything and art is just art. Genres are being melted into each other. I’m just trying to adhere to that. So you have tunes that could be considered modern classical; there’s a string piece with a flute and an Arco bass; another piece sounds like a southern Baptist [song]. I’m just trying to melt things into each other. It felt a little bit more honest, a little bit more natural than just trying to create that killing jazz album where I just play a bunch of trumpet stuff and deal with every solo the exact same way. I think that’s corny and I think that’s a lot of the reason that people are turned off by jazz because they have relate to what’s going on now in most cases, and it doesn’t reflect the times now. I’m really conscious about that and trying to be honest and not control what’s coming out of me, trying to be a conduit for this thing that’s higher than me. Not that that process is so different, but I think I’m a little more comfortable with it now.
L+T: There’s some interesting song titles, too. Did you come up with the song titles first, then create the compositions? Talk about naming these records.
AA: For this one, I came up with characters. So, “As We Fight (Willie Penrose),” [Penrose] is this dude who fought in the Vietnam War. A lot of these tunes were composed during the time of the Trayvon Martin case, that really had a big impact on me. [Penrose] is a Black guy who has some mental problems from the war and he’s sitting in a cabin in a rocking chair and he has a wife, and he’s watching the Trayvon Martin case on a black and white television screen. There’s something about that image that is really strong to me, and that’s what that composition was about. I create characters and stories, so a lot of these just had the [character’s] name, and the title is really about what the character is going through. In “Vartha”, Vartha is actually a girl I saw in my head whose parents passed away in China or somewhere East, and she became the came the queen of her land at six or seven years old. The song goes back and forth between capturing the side of her and a narrator view. I do that just because I think that helps the form of the song, it helps the song lift off the page a little bit more. Not that it’s easier for me to compose, but I definitely have more tools to work with.
L+T: Is Penrose a fictional character or a real person?
AA: That’s a fictional character. It just sounds like an old-school southern Black name: Willie Penrose [laughs].
L+T: You mentioned Trayvon Martin as a source of inspiration. The song “Rollcall For Those Absent” is one that really sticks out and is very powerful. It’s simple but the circumstances speak for themselves.
AA: I feel like while I have this platform, I don’t want to just stand on the platform and yell “Me, Me, Me!” The role of an artist, like Maya Angelou says, is to liberate. My last album, I had “My Name Is Oscar” for Oscar Grant. The effect that that had was amazing. That made me realize what I’m here to do. Oscar Grant’s family started coming to my concerts; I would be in the Ukraine and somebody would come up to me and say, “Who’s Oscar Grant?”, and I would tell them the story. I said as long as I have this platform, I’m going to talk about stuff like this that relates to my fears, what I deal with. [A lot of the people named in the song] weren’t on national television, so that means just don’t know, even here America. So, I have a kid reading the names and then all of a sudden you hear “Trayvon Martin,” who’s known globally. It’s like a slap in the face, like, “Wait a minute? You’re telling me all these people are like Trayvon?” Then it comes again laid on top of Oscar Grant to tie it in and say the same thing happened three or four years ago and nothing has changed. I chose to have a kid read it because there’s something about the beginning of life talking about the end of life that’s really appealing to me. There’s a shock value to it and I really wanted to do that.
L+T: Grant is from Oakland and many of the others named in that song are from New York. You’ve spent time in both places. How has growing up in those urban settings influenced you?
AA: That’s a great question. Oakland is one of the richest cities in terms of culture in the world. The angle that I always think about when I meet people, they’re like, “Oh my God, you’re just so well-behaved.” That’s what it was when I was younger. “You’re just so different.” As I got older, I started to realize, I am that person standing on the corner selling drugs and hustling. I am these things, and the older I got, I didn’t want to separate myself from that. The more I wanted to say, “I’m the same cat that’s standing on the corner, so you might want to look at him a little differently too.” That’s what I think about a lot when I think about being from Oakland. A lot of my friends, they are those cats from the corners or that you read about in the newspaper. I always carry that with me. It gives me a lot of inspiration to represent for my neighborhood. I know that’s not really the question, but it’s what I think about daily, just trying to be a positive voice for my race, specifically my community and more specifically for Oakland. The Oscar Grant thing really hit home for me because it happened ten minutes away from where I grew up. You look at him and it’s like, “Man, that really could have been me.” I’m the type of person where I will speak up. Now that I’ve gotten a chance to know his family, [I found out] we had friends in common. It’s crazy.
the imagined savior is far easier to paint is available today.
Music Interviews
Ambrose Akinmusire: 'Music Can Tell You What It Wants To Be'
5:27
March 16, 2014
NPR Staff
Ambrose Akinmusire's latest album is the imagined savior is far easier to paint. Autumn DeWilde/Courtesy of the artist
For a jazz trumpet player, you couldn't be more on top of the world than Ambrose Akinmusire. The 32-year-old is looking good on the cover of this month's DownBeat, and he's managed to please the jazz critics and connect with audiences. It goes without saying that Akinmusire can tear it up on the trumpet — but on his new album the imagined savior is far easier to paint, he often cedes the spotlight to other players, in particular the eclectic selection of guest singers he invited to join his own quintet in the studio.
Akinmusire spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about the unlikely influences — string quartets, documentary films, Joni Mitchell — that have molded him into one of the most talked-about names in contemporary jazz. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.
First Listen
Review: 'the imagined savior is far easier to paint'
This album has a very different feeling from your last — not only different instrumentation, but there are styles that get kind of far away from jazz. Did you set out to do something totally different, or did it just come out this way?
It just came out this way. I didn't set out to do anything different. I don't really approach my craft and my music like that. I would hope that it would be different, because that other album was recorded four years ago, and I definitely have changed a lot in those four years.
There's a broad palette of sounds, though, that you're using, like adding a string quartet and a guitarist. What is it about a string quartet that you like? Who are your favorite composers when it comes to string quartets?
Oh man. I really love Ravel; there's not so many string quartets that he wrote, but I love his sense of melodic development, and I love his orchestration. But the thing that attracts me to the string quartet is the ability to sustain a note. It sounds really simple, but in a jazz quintet — you know, with trumpets, saxophone, bass, piano and drums — you can't really sustain a note for longer than maybe 30, 45 seconds. But with strings, you can have one note into infinity. You can kind of get this hovering bubble thing that you can't get in a jazz quintet.
"The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits" really manifests that. It's almost like an organ, holding those tones.
And that's hard to do in a jazz quintet, with those instruments. Everybody has to take a breath; there's decay in piano and drums and all this other stuff.
It would be be exhausting.
Or just impossible. The way I see it is that you kind of get to cheat time — like you can press "slow motion" all of the sudden.
It's also nice to hear the way your group plays along, like on "Inflatedbyspinning" — your bass player is kind of blending with the strings, but it's a different voice, a different feeling.
Yeah, that was kind of the point. He represents the rough part of the image I had for that tune. I had imagined it as these three woman wearing white, just kind of spinning on the edge of a cliff, and one of them is holding a red balloon. And so the bass represents the cliff, and the other string instruments represent the people that are spinning. And it builds and builds, and at the end, the balloon is inflated.
There's also some gorgeous flute in the string sections; how did that come about?
Over the last year or two, I've been thinking a lot about the beginning and end of something — like a full spectrum. And so, I'm really into having the flute play in the upper register, and having the bass at the bottom, or the end, of that spectrum. The same concept is represented in "Rollcall for Those Absent."
This is the track where you have a young girl, Muna Blake, reciting the names of these people who have died in various instances of police brutality or injustice.
She's at the beginning of her life, talking about the end of the other people's lives. It's the same sort of concept. I'm really fascinated by having these things right next to each other, as opposed to seeing the whole full spectrum –- to just kind of rub them together and see how that feels, and what's produced from that.
It's really haunting.
It is.
What did you tell her?
I didn't tell her anything.
You just gave her a list of names?
Yeah. I'm good friends with her mother, Rio Sakairi — who actually does the booking at The Jazz Gallery in New York. And her father is a great jazz drummer, Johnathan Blake.
That's how it's got that really real feel to it. She doesn't know how to say "Amadou Diallo."
I love that. Trayvon Martin, though, she's at least heard that name. I like it because a lot of the names, people are familiar with. You come in, and you're just kind of like, "What is this?" And then when you hear Trayvon Martin, in the middle of the piece, you say, "Oh, okay." And then I have her read the names again, now that we recognize what's really going on. I really like the part where you have Oscar Grant's name — you know, the unfortunate situation that took place a few years ago. You have that on top of Trayvon Martin, and it's sort of saying, "This is still happening. It's the same story, just a different time."
There are lots of these kinds of references all through your songs and albums, even the tracks without words in them. A lot of the songs have these parenthetical titles, and I want to ask about one of them: "Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child." The name in the parentheses for that one is Cyntoia Brown. First off, who is Cyntoia Brown?
Sometimes when I'm practicing, if I'm not feeling so inspired to do long tones, I'll watch a documentary while I'm doing them. I stumbled upon this one documentary called The 16 Year Old Killer. This girl just had a really, really crazy life: She was a prostitute, and long story short, she ended up killing one of her clients in bed. She thought he was reaching for a gun, and she grabbed the gun, and she killed him. She went to jail, and I think she's still there. The thing that really affected me was to see the transformation she went through — because at the beginning of the documentary she's 16, and by the end she's 21, 22, and she's just so hopeless. So, that's what that's about. It's a great documentary; I would recommend it to anybody.
The recording features singing by the Canadian artist Cold Specks. How did you prep her when you talked about this song with her?
I didn't, really, so much. I really believe that music can tell you what it wants to be or what it is, if you really can tap into it and submit to it. I sent her a recording I'd made of me playing the tune while I was watching the documentary, on silent. I didn't tell her any of this. I sent that to her, and she said, "OK, I get the vibe." Then the band went into the studio in New York and tracked it, and I sent that to her. And she said, "This is a little different, but it still has the same vibe." And then I went to Toronto to record with her — and she just hit it out of the park. I didn't even tell her the story. There was no title; I didn't tell her anything. It just happened to line up like that.
A Blog Supreme
Why Does It Feel Important To Like Rap? (As A Jazz Fan)
There are some great examples in jazz of vocalists singing with trumpet players, like Sarah Vaughan and Clifford Brown. But I think people may not realize how hard it is to play a trumpet with a singer, because of the kind of restraint you have to have. It's wild the way you play along underneath her here.
Yeah, it's not so hard for me because I'm totally influenced by female vocalists. My biggest influence right now, and has been for a long time, is Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell or Björk, or before them, maybe Sarah Vaughan. I'm really into the female voice. It's sort of in the same range as the trumpet. The same reason I'm into the cello; these are things that really move me.
I want to talk to you about Steve Coleman, a great saxophone player. Would you say that he discovered you?
Um, have I been discovered? What does that mean?
You've got a second album on Blue Note now, and a host of big critiques. I think you're out there.
I was talking about this the other day with someone. I'm still really young, but I'm old enough to have new chapters in my life, to have different chapters. So, I don't know if I can say, "That was it. That was the moment." Right now, it's just a chapter, and before that, it was a chapter. There's the chapter of being taken to jam sessions and to flea markets by the local musicians, and after that there was school, and after that there was the Monk Institute, and after that there were competitions. There were always chapters, and you meet different people along the way. For me, when you look back, everybody's really important, just in different ways.
What's kind of interesting for me, as a fan, is I feel like Steve Coleman has been like a finishing school for some of the young players who are coming up with amazing new sounds these days. What is it about him as a teacher?
The same thing that I find inspiring about Joni: He's just totally committed to the music. Everything he does is related to the music, getting better, trying to get as close to that mystical thing as possible while he's here on earth. It's amazing to go on tour with him, to see him push as hard as he pushes every night, no matter what. I met him when I was 17, and I mean, he had more energy than me when I was 17. And he's so, so into me, so excited, and he's been able to maintain that for so many years.
You're going to tour this music, and it's pretty complicated, especially with all the extra instrumentation. Are you going to preserve all these concepts on the road?
We're planning on doing a bigger band — we'll have [singer] Theo Bleckmann and Charles Altura, the guitar player — but my main focus is really the quintet. These guys are really close to me, and when I'm composing, these are the people I hear inside my head, so there's that side of it. Then there's just the budget side of it: It's pretty hard to tour a string quartet, a guitar, three vocalists and a jazz quintet. That's close to impossible.
I want to ask about one more song, "Our Basement," which has the name "Ed" in parentheses. Who is Ed?
Ed is this older gentleman that I see every single day. He lives on my block; he's a homeless guy. And when you first see him you're like, "OK, a homeless guy. Whatever." But I opened up a local paper one day and there was a big picture of Ed. And I was like, "OK, this is interesting. Let me read this." I learned he was in the war, and his wife died. But the interesting part is that he would go to this church that was across the street from my house every weekend, and they would feed him. And he would save money throughout the week, throughout the month, to pay them. There's something really inspiring about that.
That song is sung by Becca Stevens. Maybe it doesn't seem strange to you, but she isn't necessarily who I would associate with this character as you described him to me. But it works.
Well, I've known Becca for a long time. When I was at Manhattan School of Music, she was at The New School. And she's someone who everybody, in my generation at least, looks up to. She's really a genius — I don't like using that word too much, she really has tapped into something in a deep way. I just wanted to work with her, so before I even knew what I was going to do for this album, I wrote her and said, "Hey, Becca, can you write a tune for my next album?" And she said, "Sure, what do you want?" I said, "Can you just write it from the perspective of a homeless man?" And she said, "OK, great." And she produced this. And then I showed her the story later.
by Zimasa
The day I met the man with the trumpet: Ambrose Akinmusire
A previously unpublished story I wrote after an interview in 2013 with African American trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.
“Oh my, I think I am going to cry. This is too beautiful” The lady sitting next to me whispers in my ear. We are sitting right in front of the stage, on the hard-floor, cross-legged, wide-eyed with eager ears. As the Ambrose Akinmusire quintet serenades us at the 15th annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival, my mind wonders and I think of the history of jazz. From its inception in New Orleans in the 1920’s and 30’s, the radical years of the 1960’s and 70’s, to the innovative musicians of the 2000’s. I ask myself, do jazz musician consider this rich history when they make their music? How do jazz musicians respond to our current social and political climate using music? I decided to speak with Akinmusire about my questions; an award winning African American trumpeter, bandleader and composer.
We met on a Sunday afternoon at the Cape Sun hotel, where most of the artists performing at the festival were staying. The lunch time buzz of the hotel restaurant combined with the racket of exhausted musicians checking out made it a bit hard for us to hear each other, but because when Ambrose speaks, he is committed to a conversation, listening attentively and picking his words intelligently, the noise slowly died away as we became immersed in our conversation.
After briefly talking about the rise in the number of protests in South Africa, the Marikana massacre – where 34 miners were fatally shot by police – and about the minimum wage in South Africa versus America, I decided to kick off the official interview by asking him whether he felt any pressure creating his new album considering the resounding success of the previous one. “When I create an album, I really try to figure out what that album is missing or what I’m missing, then I try to address those in the next album. I didn’t feel any pressure, but I do more than ever feel a sense of obligation because I can no longer convince myself that people aren’t watching me or that I don’t matter…” the trumpeter confesses. “I feel a sense of obligation for my community that I grew up in, I’m starting to feel a sense of obligation for, I haven’t formulated it yet and I don’t even know how to explain it, for Africans… I want to bring people together, especially black people.”
Ambrose’s father is Nigerian, so he grew up with some connection with his African side of his family. “You know it’s so cliché to say, ‘you need to go back to Africa’. I’ve heard this all my life but coming here I’m like oh shit, it’s true!” Refreshingly though, Ambrose also realises how cliché it has become for American artists to think of Africa as ‘the motherland’, without making an effort to learn about African history and how that connects to Africans landing in America through the slave-trade.
We then later walked to Greenmarket square, an African market in the Cape Town city centre that is always buzzing with vendors eager to get their display items purchased by fascinated tourists. Interestingly, the market is filled with exactly those people Akinmusire speaks off, that exoticize Africa.
As we walk through the market we discuss some of the hardships that befall young black men in America and the world. One of those is the high rate of young black men being brutally murdered by the police. He addresses this problem in 'Roll call for those absent', a song where a little girl reads out the names of various young black men who were victims of police brutality and an unjust system in the States. He explores the same concept in a song from his previous album called My name is Oscar. There is a confrontational posture to the song, it could be the vibrant drums or Akinmusire’s repetition of Oscar’s name, as compared to Roll call… which is much calmer, meditative even as it awakens a sense of loss.
These songs then drive home the message that in the current social and political climate, black people dying in numbers with no action – or justice – is nothing new. His concern with his community and expression of that concern through music reminds me of the zeal and commitment of the Black Arts Movement in the 60’s and 70’s. A sister to the Black Power movement in the States, it focused on radicalising art so that it represented what the people were going through at the time. I therefore find it important to listen to Akinmusire’s work with an open mind, not only to the different, engaging sounds he brings, but also to what he is saying about his social and political environment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zimasa is a young (arts) journalist and writer. She reads, writes, and sometimes sings. She believes politics and history govern all aspects of our lives
East Bay native Ambrose Akinmusire’s determination has him on brink of stardom
1 of 3
World renowned trumpet player Ambrose Akinmusire is photographed in Berkeley, Calif. Monday, April 4, 2011. (Kristopher Skinner/Staff)
San Jose Mercury News
May 5, 2011| UPDATED: August 13, 2016
Ambrose Akinmusire remembers how his curiosity used to get him in trouble.
Growing up in North Oakland, he couldn’t walk by his grandmother’s piano without putting his small hands on the keys. His grandma would shoo him away, but he’d soon return. It was a similar scene at his local church.
“They got tired of chasing me away,” laughs Akinmusire during a recent interview at Jazzschool in Berkeley. “The reverend said, ‘Hey, leave him alone. Maybe he’s supposed to play.'”
It appears the reverend’s hunch was right on the money. Akinmusire, 29, is a hot property in the jazz world, having garnered already two prestigious awards, including the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, and inked a deal with the genre’s most prestigious record company, Blue Note.
Only he hasn’t made his name on the piano; he settled instead on the trumpet.
Akinmusire (pronounced: “ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee”) also has won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition, and recently released his excellent and adventurous Blue Note debut, “When the Heart Emerges Glistening,” one of the season’s most-buzzed-about jazz records.
Akinmusire — who has lived in New York City since graduating from Berkeley High School in 2000 — will be back in the Bay Area to perform his first headlining show for SFJAZZ, on May 22 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. That he’ll take the stage surrounded by grand expectations, as someone considered a bright hope for the genre’s future, doesn’t surprise those who’ve followed his career.
“Ambrose first played for SFJAZZ during one of our ‘youth in jazz’ concerts, with the Berkeley High jazz band when he was a standout with that band,” says Randall Kline, SFJAZZ executive director. “You could see then that he had the potential of becoming a professional. It is sweet to have him come back to SFJAZZ with the potential of becoming a star.”
Choices, choices
It took Akinmusire some time to settle on the trumpet. After flirting with the piano, he picked up the drumsticks — and the signs of that brief endeavor are still visible at his childhood home.
“I was just walking around the house, hitting things with the sticks,” Akinmusire remembers of his drumming days. “There are still holes in the walls. My mom said, ‘You’ve got to pick a different instrument.'”
It wasn’t until sixth grade that he decided on the trumpet. He chose it over the saxophone, he says, mainly because it had fewer parts and thus appeared easier to learn. Yet, there would be no shortcuts in his musical education — Akinmusire’s mom made sure of that. She pushed him to practice constantly.
“When I was a kid, I hated it,” he says of practicing. “I was like, ‘Mom, all my friends are going to the mall!’ But she definitely knew what she was doing.”
Akinmusire showed such promise by the time he graduated junior high school that he changed districts to enroll in the heralded jazz program at Berkeley High. There he met kindred souls, ones that Akinmusire says were at least as talented as he was.
“I was definitely not the cat who was killing everybody on his instrument,” he recalls. “What I do have is a work ethic. I can practice all day. That’s the quality that I have. I get moody if I don’t practice.”
Along with participating in Berkeley High’s famed jazz ensemble, which had already produced such rising stars as Joshua Redman and Dave Ellis, the high schooler began performing with Khalil Shaheed, Marcus Shelby and other top local musicians. Akinmusire also finagled private lessons with the likes of Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove.
Those contacts served him well when he moved to New York City to study at the Manhattan School of Music.
“I can still call up Roy (Hargrove) or Nicholas (Payton) and say, ‘What do you think about this?'” he says.
After playing in various ensembles in NYC for the better part of the decade, Akinmusire was established enough to record his debut CD, “Prelude: to Cora” (named in honor of his mother), on a small European label in 2007. That same year, he’d win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo competitions, which brought him to the attention of many big-time U.S. jazz labels, including Blue Note.
“After Ambrose won the Monk competition in 2007, the Blue Note team went downtown to hear him play in New York,” says Bruce Lundvall, chairman emeritus of Blue Note Records. “We were impressed by his technique but felt he wasn’t ready to sign at that point.”
Akinmusire remembers that gig well, and he’s not surprised that it didn’t result in him being signed to Blue Note.
“It was one of the worst gigs I’ve done in my life,” he says. “And I’m not just saying that. That gig was horrible.”
A second chance
Two years later, however, it was a different story. Intrigued by recommendations from jazz superstars Jason Moran and Terence Blanchard, Lundvall thought the Blue Note team should go see the young trumpeter once again.
“Quite honestly, I was stunned by his growth, and we made a unanimous agreement to try and sign Ambrose,” Lundvall says. “He has absolutely found his own personal voice on the instrument. He has an adventurous and fresh vision that is advancing the future of the music.”
That vision is clear on “When the Heart Emerges Glistening,” which, among other things, earned a four-star review from DownBeat magazine, which gushed, “Akinmusire’s forceful outing is as noteworthy for the strength of the overall concept as for the individual accomplishments of its leader, head-turning as they are. “… Clearly something very special and personal is at work here, a vision of jazz that’s bigger than camps, broader and more intellectually restless than blowing sessions.”
Staying grounded
Akinmusire is glad so many people dig his Blue Note debut, but refuses to define his value by other people’s words.
“Maya Angelo has a great quote about compliments,” he says. “She says don’t pick them up and don’t put them down.”
And, as his mom might say, keep on practicing and looking to the future. In regard to the latter, Akinmusire is already thinking about his eventual follow-up to “When the Heart Emerges Glistening,” which he says might feature a few female guest vocalists.
“I love the female voice. It is so versatile. It can be angry. It can be pretty,” he says. “But I feel like the female voice always has an element of beauty in it. And my idea of music — at least right now — is that it should always have some type of beauty in it.”
Read Jim Harrington’s Concert Blog
at http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/category/concerts. Follow him at http://twitter.com/jimthecritic.
NEW ALBUM: “When the Heart Emerges Glistening,” on the Blue Note label.
CONCERT: 7 p.m. May 22; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., S.F.; $20-$35; 866-920-5299, www.sfjazz.org
Jazz Review: Ambrose Akinmusire’s ‘The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint’
Ambrose Akinmusire (Courtesy Autumn de Wilde)
by Andrew Gilbert
March 14, 2014
KQED
About 10 years ago, when trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire was getting ready to start the Thelonious Monk Institute’s prestigious master’s program, I tried to set up an interview with him to talk about some Bay Area gigs he had coming up. He politely declined, saying he felt that his music hadn’t developed enough to talk about yet.
Now based in Los Angeles, he’s taken much the same approach to his recording career. Rather than jumping into the studio to get his name out there, he has bided his time, waiting until he had something to say.
With his 2011 debut for Blue Note, “When The Heart Emerges Glistening,” he delivered a poised program of original material, music that bristled with commitment, intelligence and simmering emotion.
His enthralling new album, “the imagined savior is far easier to paint,” comes freighted with an even more evocative title, and represents a leap in creative ambition. The album features settings for string quartet, probing character studies inspired by stories of his own invention and art songs, like “Our Basement” by folk/jazz vocalist Becca Stevens, who sings on the album’s only track not written by Akinmusire.
The trumpeter often composes by writing a title first. Sometimes it’s a name that he supplies with a backstory, and other times it’s a poetic phrase. While he designs his music for his working quintet, Akinmusire isn’t interested in supplying the band with catchy themes or showcases for virtuosic soloing. He wants to paint pictures and tell stories, like on the surprisingly calm “Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child” featuring the craggy soul of Canadian singer/songwriter Cold Speck.
Akinmusire’s trumpet, warm, pliant and deeply burnished, is an expressive match for any of the vocalists. On “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits,” featuring the OSSO String Quartet and 19-year-old Berkeley flautist Elena Pinderhughes, the pastel wash coheres rather than breaks apart.
In many ways, he’s a proud product of the Bay Area scene. He started immersing himself in jazz through a program at Oakland’s Alice Arts Center run by saxophonist Jessica Jones, another noted Berkeley High alum. Trumpeter Khalil Shaheed provided more information and playing opportunities at the Oaktown Jazz Workshop, and bandleaders Howard Wiley and Marcus Shelby started hiring the teenage trumpeter for gigs.
A full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music put Akinmusire in the thick of the New York scene, where he thrived. After four years, another scholarship brought him back to the West Coast, where he earned a master’s at the Thelonious Monk Institute’s elite program run by trumpeter Terence Blanchard at the University of Southern California.
What’s most impressive about Akinmusire is that he’s dedicated to a band sound that flows from the musicians who surround him. On “the imagined savior” he is joined by pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III and drummer Justin Brown, a tremendously resourceful drummer who’s also a Berkeley High grad.
For jazz fans who often despair about the music’s miniscule market share, the search is always on for a figure who will lead jazz back to the center of American culture. Though he’s sometimes been cast in the role, Akinmusire isn’t letting anyone paint him into a corner. “the imagined savior” is nothing like one might expect from jazz’s hottest young trumpeter, which is to say it’s a true reflection of Akinmusire’s expansive creative vision.
Explore: Arts and Culture, Music Review
Daring premiere from rising trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire
Trumpet player Ambrose Akinmusire performs at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, on July 31, 2015. (Eva Hambach / AFP/Getty Images)
by Howard Reich
September 22, 2015
Chicago Tribune
Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire is about to give Chicago a major world premiere.
Each year, the Hyde Park Jazz Festival gains artistic stature, and the ninth annual edition shows just how formidable a force it is becoming.
The event, which runs Saturday and Sunday across the historic neighborhood, will feature three major world premieres, each commissioned by the fest and each devoted — in one way or another — to the art of telling a story through jazz.
The event, which runs Saturday and Sunday across the historic neighborhood, will feature three major world premieres, each commissioned by the fest and each devoted — in one way or another — to the art of telling a story through jazz.
Among them, the most eagerly anticipated premiere will be the work of the superb trumpeter-bandleader Ambrose Akinmusire, who already is enjoying a remarkable year, having won a $275,000 Doris Duke Artist Award and a commission from the Kennedy Center for a piece he'll premiere in 2016.
Long before receiving all of this recognition, however, Akinmusire had been conceptualizing the opus he will bring to Hyde Park: "banyan." The title refers to an East Indian fig tree with deep roots and sprawling branches, a metaphor for the story Akinmusire has chosen to tell about how the jazz life evolves through the decades.
"I just wanted to address a lot of the problems that I think people in my generation are facing," says Akinmusire, whose hourlength work will combine music and video.
"Some of those problems are problems that are outside of music: like how to survive as an artist. How to have a family. How to stay creative and make money.
"And then there's the problem — or not even a problem, but a question I had about jazz education: How do we learn now, compared to how they learned before? And in jazz education, they tell you: This is the way.
"I was fortunate to play with Billy Higgins, Joe Henderson," adds Akinmusire, 33, referencing two of many jazz legends with whom he has shared a bandstand. "The things they taught me were very different from what I was taught in college. And I would say this in school, and because it was just me at 18, I was looked at like I was an idiot, just trying to buck the system."But if you talk to the masters, you can't really refute it."
Thus Akinmusire decided to talk to the masters for "banyan": He bought camera equipment, learned how to use it and conducted one-on-one interviews with jazz eminences such as saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Archie Shepp, multi-instrumentalist Henry Threadgill and bassist Ron Carter. Akinmusire asked them questions that he has wrestled with for years, and he's weaving some of their responses into a multimedia, big-band opus, with assistance from video artists A.J. Rinsky and Harrison Wood.
Exactly how the interview segments will by intercut with the music remains to be seen and heard during two shows Akinmusire will perform Saturday at the University of Chicago's Logan Center Performance Hall. At the very least, though, we'll hear new music alongside footage of great jazz musicians contemplating the past, present and future of the music.
In soliciting these thoughts, Akinmusire is following in the footsteps of drummer Arthur Taylor, whose musician-to-musician book of interviews, "Notes and Tones," served as an inspiration for "banyan."
That Akinmusire's project is coming into fruition, however, is remarkable in itself, considering how long he sought funding without success, he says. Enter Kate Dumbleton, executive and artistic director of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, who also faced obstacles but could not be deterred.
"We were not successful with the big grants we applied for," explains Dumbleton in an email. "But I had to do this project now. So I went to the old baseball strategy of 'small ball' to piece it together one base at a time."
Dumbleton felt so sure that she would be able to cobble together enough small grants to make "banyan" happen that she told Akinmusire to proceed with his work — long before the funds were in hand.
Recalls Akinmusire, "We applied for things and didn't get the funding, and I got really discouraged. And I said: 'OK, I give up. It will have to be something that lives in my head.'
"She said: 'We're doing it. Put it on your calendar.'
"I said: 'Are you sure?
As anyone who knows Dumbleton can attest, she is always sure. True to form, she found her funding — from the Harper Court Arts Council, the Logan Center, money raised at the festival's annual gala and audience contributions.
But Akinmusire's work won't be the only intriguing premiere. It will be followed by new pieces from Chicago cellist-composer Tomeka Reid, leading a string septet plus drums Saturday evening at the Wagner Stage on the Midway Plaisance; and from Chicago drummer and visual artist Mikel Patrick Avery, leading his "Parade" on Sunday afternoon at the West Stage on the Midway Plaisance. Both pieces have been inspired by the festival's ongoing Story Share Project, in which festgoers have recorded their jazz reminiscences during previous editions of the event.
As for Akinmusire's "banyan," the piece collects a wide range of thoughts and reflections on jazz in America, says the trumpeter, but most of the artists he interviewed articulated at least one common theme.
"Each person said it in their own way: 'We're all in this together,'" says Akinmusire.
"That relates to my generation as a generation; it relates to us relating to Buddy Bolden and before Buddy Bolden. We're all in this together. There is no us and them. … Wayne (Shorter) would say: We're all trying to get to the edge of the universe.
"A lot of these questions I could have asked any elder off the street. I'm not saying we need help. I'm saying we need to get somewhere. If we're all in this together, we'll get there quicker."
This weekend we'll learn how well "banyan" conveys that message.
The Hyde Park Jazz Festival runs from 1 p.m. to midnight Saturday and 2-7 p.m. Sunday in various locations; admission is free (though some events require tickets obtained at the Logan Center box office 30 minutes before showtime). Akinmusire's "banyan" plays at 3:30 and 5:15 p.m. Saturday in the University of Chicago's Logan Center Performance Hall, 915 E. 60th St. The Tomeka Reid Ensemble performs at 8:30 p.m. Saturday at the Wagner Stage on the Midway Plaisance, near Woodlawn Avenue; and Avery's "Parade" unfolds at 3 p.m. Sunday at the West Stage on the Midway Plaisance, near Ellis Avenue. Visit www.hydeparkjazzfestival.org.
hreich@tribpub.com
Twitter @howardreich
"Portraits in Jazz": Howard Reich's e-book collects his exclusive interviews with Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and others, plus profiles of past masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Get "Portraits in Jazz" at chicagotribune.com/ebooks.
Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune
Jazz fest: Ambrose Akinmusire protests eloquently through his horn
by T'Cha Dunlevy,June 27, 2017
Ambrose Akinmusire’s life in music began in the church. No, he is not an R&B vocalist who got his start in a gospel choir, but rather a world-class trumpeter-composer deftly sidestepping his coronation as the new voice of jazz on his instrument of choice.
Choice is the operative word, because to hear Akinmusire tell it, he could have been a pianist or a drummer.
“I got into music through the black Baptist Church,” said the born-and-bred Oakland native, reached at home on a recent Friday morning. “My mother’s side of the family is from Mississippi. They moved over in the 1970s, and the reason I’m telling you that fact is that a lot of blacks from that era gain a lot of strength from the church.”
Akinmusire found inspiration.
“I would run up at a young age and bang on the piano,” he said. “So my parents decided to put me in piano lessons.”
He was two years old.
He switched to drums at age 11, but drums are loud and so his mother made him pick something else.
“I chose trumpet,” he said. “I thought it would be easy, with just three valves. Little did I know …”
Nearly 2½ decades later, Akinmusire has displayed a stunning mastery of his instrument on two studio albums — the pulsating When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011) and the stirring The Imagined Saviour is Far Easier to Paint (2014) — released on revered jazz label Blue Note; in addition to which, on the day of our conversation, came the double-album A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard, featuring 16 fresh compositions performed at the venerable New York City institution.
Needless to say, the man has a way with a title.
“You never know the entry point to your art for someone,” he said. “For me, every little element has to match. When you read a title of mine, you kind of know what it’s going to sound like. When the Heart Emerges Glistening is not going to sound like anything but that. A Rift in Decorum is probably not going to be an easy-listening album.”
Lingering between those album titles, his carefully chosen song titles and the vibrant musicianship in the pieces they represent are the personal and socio-political motivations of a concerned citizen who, when he’s not thinking about life or concocting evocative word combinations, speaks most eloquently through his horn.
And so while My Name is Oscar and Rolecall for Those Absent directly reference police shootings, Akinmusire sees any real or imagined proclamations made by his music in a broader context.
“It brings me to something I’ve realized in the last few years,” he said, “and that I’ve maybe known for a long time: My existence is political. That’s only heightened by me standing on stage at the Village Vanguard, by me (recording) on Blue Note, by my ability to exist and make statements.
“Sometimes I feel like verbalizing things takes away from things that already are. I could have been at the Vanguard and said, ‘F— Trump!’ Or, ‘We’re still being murdered here in the U.S.,’ or ‘black lives matter.’ I can do that, or I can find creative ways of doing that, that represent protest spiritually or sonically — that’s what I think is captured on this (live) album.”
He points to an instance on the almost-10-minute Moment In Between the Rest (To Curve an Ache), an alternately ethereal and temperamental trumpet meditation during which, following some frantic jousting with drummer Justin Brown, he dips into an ever-so-brief interpolation, “just a snippet,” of The Star Spangled Banner.
“In the middle of all this chaos,” he explained, “it’s the same as complaining about what’s going on here politically. Like any type of protest, you can verbalize things or you can bypass people’s beliefs — whether they’re republican, democratic, white or black — and get straight to the point.”
Akinmusire’s CV includes performances on albums by Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd, Esperanza Spalding, the Roy Hargrove Big Band, David Binney, Jack DeJohnette and Wolfgang Muthspiel, as well as an appearance on the last song of rapper Kendrick Lamar’s jazz cat-filled 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly.
The trumpeter is currently nearing completion of his next full-length album, in which he hopes to “smash together” modern classical music with hip hop. In Akinmusire’s mind, his place in jazz exists on an evolving, limitless continuum.
“I’ve always known what this music is about,” he said. “This is black music, that comes from the black experience and is for black people — which doesn’t mean only black people can play it, but it means that’s the origins of it. It comes from the blues, slavery and field hollers. I’ve never been under any other assumptions or beliefs. So when I hear church music, hip hop or any other types of black expression, I hear jazz.
“I believe most music is the expression of someone’s experience, just like black music. It’s the same thing when I listen to Bach, Mozart, a Bulgarian women’s choir or music from Nigeria or Denmark. … To be more concise, when I’m creating, I take all those things, all that research and put it in a blender and think, ‘How do I express my experience?’ ”
AT A GLANCE: Ambrose Akinmusire performs Thursday at 8 p.m. at Monument National, 1182 St. Laurent Blvd. Tickets cost $40.75, available at montrealjazzfest.com
Ambrose Akinmusire
Ambrose's conceptual extension into a new musical language is never to the exclusion of beauty. As one who listens intently, he values the fertility of a pause, of communication, of tension. Ambrose began conceptualizing early as a musician, theorizing and experimenting as a catalyst for development. He seeks other genres of music to analyze and expose, drawing inspiration from such musicians as Bjork and Chopin. Ambrose’s music restructures accepted notions of jazz in a way that reflects his ability to recognize nuances, multiplicities, and patterns. First playing piano at the age of three, his familiarity with music began long before putting his mouth to a trumpet. He is relentlessly opposed to stagnation, seeking movement in both his music and his life.
Before he was eighteen, Ambrose had already performed with such famed musicians as Joe Henderson, Joshua Redman, Steve Coleman, and Billy Higgins. After graduating Berkeley High School, he moved to New York to begin a full scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music, studying with Vincent Pinzerella from the New York Philharmonic, Dick Oatts, Lew Soloff, and Laurie Frink.
Throughout his studies, Ambrose continued to tether audiences to his concepts and his sound, performing publicly with Lonnie Plaxico, Stefon Harris, Josh Roseman, Vijay Iyer, Charlie Persip, the Mingus Big Band, and the San Francisco Jazz Collective, to name only a few. His exposure to dynamic modes of playing and to musicians with accumulated experiences only promoted the development of his own distinct musical style. Currently in a Masters program at USC, and a member of the Monk Institute, Ambrose’s instructors include Terence Blanchard, Billy Childs and Gary Grant. In the past year, he has worked with such artists as Jimmy Heath, Jason Moran, Hal Crook, Bob Hurst, Terri Lynne Carrington, Ron Carter, and Wallace Roney, and performed in Vietnam with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.
As for a conclusion, there is none. Ambrose’s musical trajectory continues to grow in more than one direction, drawing from the most unconventional sources, unraveling the most comfortable conceptions of limitation. His persistent reevaluations and his aspirations to evolution and beauty carry it to an entirely new space within itself.
THE MUSIC OF AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE:
Ambrose Akinmusire : "The Walls of Legunchilla"
Ambrose Akinmusire "Our Basement”
May 10th, 2011, A-Trane Berlin:
Ambrose Akinmusire at Jazz Standard - Jazzmix in New ..
At the Jazz Standard- Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet " Few and Far Between":
Ambrose Akinmusire "As We Fight”
Ambrose Akinmusire - Confessions To My Unborn Daughter
Ambrose Akinmusire - The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier
Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet: 'Sketches of trumpet’
The Seasons: December with Ambrose Akinmusire & Ben
Ambrose Akinmusire - Roma Jazz Festival 2012
Ambrose Akinmusire | With Love
Walter Smith III / Ambrose Akinmusire 5tet
Ambrose Akinmusire - Moment In Between The Rest (To ..
WDR BIG BAND feat. Ambrose Akinmusire - Vartha
Ambrose Akinmusire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ambrose Akinmusire
| |
Performing in Oakland, California, 2014
| |
Background information
| |
Born
|
May 1, 1982 (age 35)
Oakland, California, U.S.
|
Genres
| |
Occupation(s)
|
Musician
|
Instruments
|
Trumpet
|
Years active
|
2000s – present
|
Labels
| |
Associated acts
| |
Website
| |
In 2007, Akinmusire was the winner of both the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition, two of the most prestigious jazz competitions in the world.[1][2]
In 2014 he won the North Sea Jazz Festival's Paul Acket Award.[3]
Contents
Biography
Born and raised in Oakland, California, Akinmusire was as a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble, where he caught the attention of saxophonist Steve Coleman who was visiting the school to give a workshop. Coleman hired him as a member of his Five Elements band for a European tour. Akinmusire was also a member of the Monterey Jazz Festival's Next Generation Jazz Orchestra. During his early development, Akinmusire often performed with Bay Area saxophonist Robert Stewart.
Akinmusire studied at the Manhattan School of Music before returning to the West Coast to take a master's degree at the University of Southern California and attend the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles. In 2007, Akinmusire won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and released his debut recording Prelude... to Cora on the Fresh Sound New Talent label. He moved back to New York City and began performing with Vijay Iyer, Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding, and Jason Moran, taking part in Moran’s innovative multimedia concert event In My Mind: Monk At Town Hall, 1957. It was also during this time that he caught the attention of Bruce Lundvall, then President of Blue Note Records.
Akinmusire made his debut on the Blue Note label in 2011 with the album When The Heart Emerges Glistening, featuring his quintet of tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown.
Akinmusire's third album, entitled The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint, was released on March 11, 2014.
Akinmusire is featured on the last track of Kendrick Lamar's 2015 release To Pimp a Butterfly.
Selected discography
As leader
Year
|
Title
|
Label
|
2008
| ||
2011
| ||
2014
|
As sideman
Year
|
Artist
|
Title
|
Label
|
2001
|
Resistance Is Futile
|
Label Bleu
| |
2002
|
Shadows
|
KeynoteRecords
| |
2003
|
In What Language?
|
Pi Recordings
| |
2006
|
Casually Introducing
|
New Talent Spain
| |
2007
|
Anti Social Club
|
Cryptogramophon
| |
2007
|
Native Language
| ||
2007
|
New Constellations: Live in Vienna (Live)
|
Accurate Records
| |
2008
|
Consequences
| ||
2008
|
Heads Up
| ||
2008
|
Form
|
Criss Cross Jazz
| |
2009
|
House Without a Door
|
lbjazz
| |
2009
|
Emergence
|
EmArcy
| |
2010
|
Don't Fight the Inevitable
|
Mythology Records
| |
2010
|
III
|
Criss Cross Jazz
| |
2010
|
Barefooted Town
|
Criss Cross Jazz
| |
2011
|
Graylen Epicenter
|
Mythology Records
| |
2011
|
Nights on Earth
|
Horizontal Jazz
| |
2011
|
Chris Dingman
|
Waking Dreams
|
Between Worlds
|
2012
|
Mette Juul
|
Moon on my Shoulder
| |
2012
|
Golden Beams/eOne
| ||
2013
|
That Nepenthentic Place
|
Sunnyside
| |
2013
|
Life Forum
|
Concord
| |
2016
|
ECM
|
Footnotes
"Competition - Past Winners and Judges". Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz. Archived from the original on 22 April 2013. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
Eisensmith, Kevin. "The 2007 Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition". International Trumpet Guild. Retrieved 30 July 2013.
- "Ambrose Akinmusire Winner Paul Acket Award". North Sea Jazz Festival. Retrieved 8 May 2014.
