Thirty years ago, in 1981, a young trumpeter made his first statement on a major label and blew listeners out of their seats. When Wynton Marsalis debuted on Columbia, it was legitimate to say that you had never heard anyone play with such quicksilver fluency. It wasn’t that the music itself was daringly original but that Marsalis’s voice on the instrument seemed like a sudden, dramatic upgrade in brilliance.
The 2011 Blue Note debut of Ambrose Akinmusire has a similar power and excitement. Akinmusire is older (28), and he already released a very good disc on Fresh Sound New Talent (Prelude to Cora). But it remains that When the Heart Emerges Glistening is a thrilling, dazzling debut—the emergence of a new voice in the music and a new sound and conception for the trumpet.
Akinmusire doesn’t come out of nowhere. He played with Steve Coleman’s Five Elements band out of high school, he attended the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in LA, then he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Akinmusire was on the radar. A jazz fan might have seen him coming. But our ears still weren’t ready.
So, what’s so special about this trumpet player? Akinmusire combines three brilliant instrumental merits: a virtuosity of speed and fluency, an ability to generate new kinds of patterns and intervals and a freshly conceived approach to sound.
Akinmusire doesn’t show off by playing fast and high, necessarily. But he moves like a ninja through an alleyway—slippery and precise, in front of you, then behind you, then beyond you. His playing on the original “The Walls of Lechuguilla” is flabbergasting. The trumpet-only introduction is like nothing you have heard before. Akinmusire toggles between two notes, playing the higher note with a deadened sound, then begins dropping the lower note micro-tonally Then he starts speeding up the pattern, then complicating it until it is a spiraling flurry. If it reminds you a bit of Lester Bowie, but also a bit of Dizzy Gillespie, then you’re hearing the kind of thrill that I am. It also brings to mind, just a bit, Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” as the whole exercise ultimately fuses brilliantly into the composition itself, continuing as a fascinating and percussive dialogue with a great rhythm section.
On this tune alone, Akinmusire demonstrates that he is playing in an original jazz trumpet voice. He monkeys with tone and note choice, but he does it at crackerjack tempo. You might be so taken with the dazzle of it all that you don’t realize that he does it all in the service of the composition. But, amazingly, he has that base covered too.
The opening tune, “Confessions to My Unborn Daughter”, is nearly as fine. Another introductory trumpet cadenza draws you in with unsettling originality, and then the band makes sense of it all with a grooving but stately triple meter. The rhythm section (pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown) locks in with a blend of jazz complexity and pop instinct. Like the finest bands out there today, these guys blend the elaborate dialogue of jazz with a stuttering edge of hip hop punch. And then there is tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, who plays like he is wired into Akinmusire’s brain directly. The two are twinned up like an Ornette Coleman/Don Cherry for the new era.
On “Confessions” and on “Henya”, there are moments where the two horn players, separately but also together, bend and choke their notes like virtuoso singers who operate without the boundaries of traditional scales or Western instruments. It might seem kind of avant-garde if it weren’t so utterly beautiful. It’s not bold as much as it is breathtaking. When the Heart Emerges Glistening isn’t a manifesto; it’s just great.
Akinmusire’s compositions are appealing, but they often have the jagged trickiness of his mentor Steve Coleman. “Far But Few Between” starts with a series of interval jabs by trumpet which are then answered by a rhythm section pattern that is so skitteringly complex that it seems improvised beyond a time signature (though I’m quite certain it is predetermined). “Jaya” is a mid-tempo groove tune based on a time pattern that sounds perfectly natural but that non-experts will hardly be able to discern. Remarkable it is, then, that these songs are not in the least forbidding or unappealing. Indeed, like all of Glistening, these tunes seem as easy to enjoy as anything from Wynton Marsalis or from a basic mid-60s Blue Note album.
A couple of tracks have notably different formats. “Ayneh (Cora)” is a delicate duet for piano (Clayton) and celeste (Akinmusire). The two also duet on “Ayneh (Campbell)” and “Regret (No More)”, where Akinmusire’s trumpet control—his mastery of tone and pure sound—serves a heartfelt melody. “My Name is Oscar” is a duet for Akinmusire’s spoken-word evocation of a police shooting in his hometown of Oakland, Calif., and Brown’s drums. Clean and powerful, it works.
Tellingly, Akinmusire includes only one standard in this recital: “What’s New”, also a duet. The feeling is outwardly more traditional, with Clayton playing in a modern stride style. But even here, the leader sounds fully up-to-the-minute, not aping his hero Clifford Brown but, instead, suggesting that Brown’s legacy is arcing into the future, decades after it seemed like there might be no new way to play “mainstream” jazz.
Kudos to Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall for getting Ambrose Akinmusire and his band into the studio. And kudos to pianist Jason Moran for not only suggesting this but also producing the recording (and playing Rhodes, subtly and beautifully, on a couple of tracks).
When the Heart Emerges Glistening is a gem. It’s a jazz record to rave about and to push on your friends. It’s the product of a talent that should send shivers up every jazz fan’s spine. Ambrose Akinmusire has been holding back, finding his voice, developing his band, and now he is here in full bloom.
Spring has arrived. You can feel it in your bones, and now you can hear it with your ears. |
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— Will Layman
POP MATTERS
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Anybody who caught the 28 year-old trumpeter’s impressive debut, Prelude: To Cora, three years ago, or his London gig with John Escreet round about the same time, or going further back, his debut with Steve Coleman, will know that the “coming man” has been coming for some time now. This new set indeed confirms a talent that is decidedly above the norm. He is also, like the aforementioned and his co-producer Jason Moran, a man happy to stride down a conceptual road less traveled.
One might point to the quite startling ‘My Name Is Oscar’ as proof positive thereof. The piece is nothing other than Akinmusire reciting fragments of a lament for a murder victim, Oscar Grant, over combustible yet airtight drumming from Justin Brown, but the combination of the voice and percussion, the excision of harmonic and melodic content, and the gaping holes left in the text are movingly eerie, a vivid metaphor for the brutal abruptness of the subject’s death. To a large extent, the song is a worthy centerpiece for the album but it is by no means the only highlight. What is apparent right from the disc’s opening salvo is that the sound that Akinmusire was developing on his previous release has evolved into an even stronger signature.
Generally speaking, that means mid or down tempo pieces with a brooding blend of baroque and black church harmony which the frontline horns enrich with themes that have an airy, often leisurely nobility to them. Akinmusire and Smith deliver potent, impressively measured improvisations but the set really stands out for the cohesion of the band and the leader’s strength of character. At this early stage of his career, Ambrose Akinmusire is already showing signs of being a major creative figure in the making, one who realises that the jazz aesthetic is as much about content as form, imagination as execution. |
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— Jazzwise Magazine
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Though not exactly a new face on the scene—Akinmusire played with Joshua Redman, Steve Coleman and Billy Higgins before he was even old enough to vote—the 28-year-old trumpeter has enjoyed such a steady rise that he seems practically predestined for a breakout in 2011.
Born in Nigeria and raised in the Bay Area, Akinmusire has ties to both coasts after studying jazz at the Manhattan School of Music and completing his master's at USC. Winner of the Thelonious Monk Institute's International Jazz Competition in 2007, his list of recent collaborators reads something like a who's who of contemporary jazz, including Vijay Iyer, Stefon Harris, Wayne Shorter and Christian McBride. A debut album in 2008 on the same small label that helped launch the early careers of Brad Mehldau and Ethan Iverson further captured fans' ears with a band that featured genre-bending pianist Aaron Parks.
Though the music industry's ongoing struggles often make news of a young artist jumping to a major label seem almost quaint, Akinmusire's signing to Blue Note Records last summer sent ripples of excitement through the online jazz community. Co-produced by new label mate Jason Moran, “When the Heart Emerges Glistening" will be released April 5 and features the same airtight group Akinmusire brought to a jam-packed Cafe Metropol this fall.
In a tune-up performance before heading into the studio for his Blue Note debut, Akinmusire and his band demonstrated a remarkably fluid, adventurous interplay and patiently imaginative way with melody that sounded as steeped in the music's history as it was hard-wired with the sound of something new. With a chameleonic tone that can sigh, flutter or soar, Akinmusire sounds less like rising star than one that was already at great heights and just waiting to be discovered. |
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— Los Angeles Times
Faces to Watch in 2011 in Music |
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News of an artist signing doesn't make much of a ripple in the music world these days, much less in the comparatively bite-size corner of the industry occupied by jazz. But when word came down of 28-year-old trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire (pronounced akin-MOO-sir-ee) inking a deal with the prestigious Blue Note Records <http://www.bluenote.com/> this summer, a fair amount of excited chatter ensued in the jazz Twitter-verse.
And with good reason. The Oakland-born musician has proven himself a talent to watch for years, working with a remarkable range of artists as a sideman, including Joe Henderson, Vijay Iyer <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-vijay-iyer-20100813,0,5500560.story> and Alan Pasqua. Closing out a brief tour before heading into the studio with top-flight pianist Jason Moran as co-producer, the New York-based Akinmusire showed a packed and energetic Cafe Metropol <http://www.cafemetropol.com/> firsthand just what exactly all the fuss is about.
Working through a first set that included a number of long, patiently unfurling compositions, Akinmusire proved a democratic bandleader. With plenty of room to stretch, his equally young and gifted band offered flashes of skill so fearless it was as if the crowd had stepped into a loose, joyful jam session. Hardly taking any time to introduce anything from the stage other than his bandmates, Akinmusire at one point began a song with a hushed, whispered melody, only to stretch his tone into thick, swerving arcs that weaved in and out of a melody from saxophonist Walter Smith III, who quickly became a crowd favorite. The set closed on a poignant note as the bandstand cleared of all but Akinmusire and pianist Gerald Clayton, with Akinmusire's horn dropping into a mourning, pensive cry that cut through a noisy back bar.
After catching up with some familiar faces between sets (Akinmusire completed his graduate studies at USC), the gloves seemed to come off as the night went on. Slipping into variety of tones that could alternately sound gruff, sharp or sleek, Akinmusire led the band through a variety of shape-shifting structures that at various points touched on twitchy, drum-and-bass funk and an irresistibly off-kilter rhythm vaguely reminiscent of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android."
As the night drew to a close, Akinmusire pulled trumpeter Dontae Winslow from the crowd to sit in as the band took turns soloing, each reaching for new, undiscovered corners in drummer Justin Brown's driving beat. With the song ready to peak, Akinmusire took his turn and instead of reaching for the rafters he went low, dropping into a dark, foghorn-like rumble that felt both out of nowhere yet utterly right. It was a reminder that anything can happen in the moment, and that even in a packed, exposed-brick cafe in an industrial corner of downtown L.A., you can sometimes see a rising star. |
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— Chris Barton
LA Times, Concert Review |
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Believe the hype for once: here’s a debut album of real depth and originality. Trumpeter Akinmusire's hypermodern yet shapely themes are not so much performed as lived and breathed by a brilliant young group |
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Evening Standard, standard.co.uk |
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..fiercely gifted young trumpeter |
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New York Times Jazz Critic |
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Prelude: To Cora, the debut disc from the young and gifted trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, is chockfull of fantastic, forward-thinking music. |
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Ottawa Citizen |
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...Prelude establishes a foundation upon which its gifted creator can build |
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Downbeat |
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A formidable debut by a major new talent. Unequivocally recommended |
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Jazzwise Magazine |
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This is an exceptional debut from an unassuming yet extremely talented new voice. |
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All About Jazz |
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Akinmusire is fond of languid, rippling patterns that emerge, echo and gradually fade into the distance. They certainly don’t fade from memory, however. Despite their lack of showiness, compositions like “Aroca,” ...manage to work their way under the skin delivering a tickle one moment and an electric jolt the next. |
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Variety |
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