Tracing jazz great Ambrose Akinmusire’s relentless sonic muse, from solo horn to hip-hop collabs

From the tender Owl Song to playing on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, US trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s career has been one of 21st century music’s greatest surprises

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American jazz musician and composer Ambrose Akinmusire, who performs at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre in July 2024, has been celebrated as one of the most influential jazz musicians of recent decades thanks to acclaimed albums including When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011), Origami Harvest (2018) and Beauty is Enough (2023). Photo: Michael Wilson

Published: 6:00am, 12 Jul 2024

Whoever put together the programme blurb for Ambrose Akinmusire’s forthcoming concert of “smooth sounds” in Hong Kong was either underselling his artistry for wider appeal or needs to take a deeper dive into the American composer and jazz trumpeter’s back catalogue.

It’s true, Akinmusire’s most recent release was a masterclass in subtle sonics that might be pleasing to the ear, but there’s not a whiff of lift Muzak about Owl Song, a delicate, late-night meditation teaming the trumpeter’s croon with the swelling twang of Bill Frisell’s guitar and the airy drumming of Herlin Riley. It’s also true that this release arrived, at the end of 2023, only six months after the even more naked offering Beauty is Enough – a deep mood piece bravely recorded as just an unaccompanied horn.

Look a few years further back and you’ll find a different conception of ragged beauty in 2018’s Origami Harvest, an experimental outing that – somehow and with only fleeting success – paired Akinmusire’s searching improvisations with both a formal classical string quartet and the frequently profane interjections of rapper Kool A.D.

Jazz great Ambrose Akinmusire is best known for his trumpet improvisations, but composes much of his original music at the piano. Photo: Michael Wilson

But Akinmusire’s most enduring recordings are those made with his long-standing cohorts – Sam Harris (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Justin Brown (drums) – so it’s exciting to learn that those musicians will be joining him onstage at the Xiqu Centre Grand Theatre, West Kowloon, on July 26.

This quartet was first captured on the thrilling, two-hour live album A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard (2017), recorded at the storied New York jazz club that has occasioned so many classic live albums – before releasing the distinctly out-there On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment, celebrated by NPR and magazine Jazzwise as being among 2020’s best recordings.

Raised in Oakland, California, 42-year-old Akinmusire garnered industry renown after winning both the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition in 2007. Those triumphs were followed a year later by debut album Prelude … to Cora, dedicated to his mother.

American jazz musician and composer Ambrose Akinmusire, who performs at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre this month. Photo: Michael Wilson

But it was his masterful opening pair of Blue Note releases – When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011) and The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint (2014) – that launched this talent into the world. Here is modern acoustic small-group jazz at its best, revealing deep compositional flair and soulful improvisation.