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Jazz Articles about Ambrose Akinmusire
Jen Shyu and Jade Tongue: Zero Grasses: Ritual for The Losses
by Hrayr Attarian
Calling vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jen Shyu brilliant, and her style unique, underestimates both her ingenuity as a composer and the distinctiveness of her oeuvre. Shyu has forged her own path in creative music with an intrepid spirit and restless innovation. Her eighth release as a leader is the intensely personal Zero Grasses: Ritual For The Losses. A cycle of songs which is equally about bereavement and injustice as it is about solace and hope, its message transcends the individual, reaching ...
Continue ReadingTrumpet Master Ambrose Akinmusire - Broad Vision
by Russell Perry
Known as a constantly searching and forward-looking musician, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire won the Thelonious Monk (now Herbie Hancock) International Jazz Competition in 2007 at 27 years old. His first album, Prelude to Cora, announced a bright new talent willing to honor multiple strains of influences from hip-hop to classical with stops at post-bop, funk, and free jazz. His periodic highly-regarded solo efforts have been complemented by a string of excellent sideman collaborations. Recent work from exciting young trumpeter Ambrose Akimusire ...
Continue ReadingRoscoe Mitchell Quartet: Come and See What There Is to See
by Mark Corroto
In a recent interview, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire related the story of when he first visited a jazz club; as an eighth grader in Oakland, he experienced a performance by The Art Ensemble Of Chicago. What a spectacle it must have been and, of course, he would have witnessed the maestro himself, Roscoe Mitchell. Decades later Akinmusire, some 42 years Mitchell's junior, dedicated a song, “Mr. Roscoe (Consider The Simultaneous)," on his release On The Tender Spot Of Every ...
Continue ReadingAmbrose Akinmusire: On The Tender Spot Of Every Calloused Moment
by Chris May
Trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire rings the changes admirably from album to album. On The Tender Spot Of Every Calloused Moment is the most stripped down of his Blue Note outings (it is his fifth album for the label). It is made with a quartet. There is no second horn. The sound is ECM-like in its monastic simplicity. At fifty minutes it is also Akinmusire's most concise work to date. And while substantial portions of The Imagined Savior Is Far ...
Continue ReadingAmbrose Akinmusire, Omri Zeigele, Adam Caine & More
by Maurice Hogue
When a highly respected saxophonist like David Binney recommends a young up-and-coming musician, I tend to pay attention. Los Angeles trombonist Logan Kane and his Nonet live up to the tip on his new Nope, Science, one of the featured new releases hitting this week. Also of great interest are albums from the much-admired trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, Swiss alto player Omri Ziegele with Han Bennink in tow, guitarist Adam Caine, drummer Mike Pride with saxophonist Jonathan Moritz, and another duo, ...
Continue ReadingVijay Iyer & Mike Ladd: InWhatStrumentals
by Karl Ackermann
In 2003 Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd released In What Language?, a hybrid jazz/hip hop response to post-9/11 American paranoia. Inspired by many related injustices, the inflection point was the extended detention, handcuffing and humiliation of a prominent Iranian filmmaker passing through JFK International Airport. Seventeen years later America was mired in multiple unprecedented crises, giving cause to repurpose that album. Iyer and Ladd had the instrumental masters from 2003, and release them here as InWhatStrumentals: Music from In What ...
Continue ReadingMonterey Jazz Festival 2019
by Josef Woodard
Monterey Jazz Festival Monterey County Fairgrounds Monterey, CA September 27-19, 2019 It sometimes happens at the historic Monterey Jazz festival that the “main" and most memorable takeaways of a program occur away from the main arena stage. And so it went at the 62nd annual festival in September--at least to these ears, belonging to a Monterey festival veteran. While the arena roster banked on the high profile and varying artistic merits of Diana ...
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