Music
For a Team Player, the Solo Moments Are Secondary
AMBROSE AKINMUSIRE, a 28-year-old trumpeter on the verge of jazz stardom, has a penetrating gaze, a compact frame and the wary poise of someone at home with his own thoughts. He was bundled up one recent afternoon, surveying his favorite spot to practice: a park bench on a promontory jutting into Spuyten Duyvil Creek, at the northern tip of Manhattan. The bench faces the Henry Hudson Bridge and the river beyond. "I like the way it sounds out here," he said. When he's practicing, people usually leave him alone.
Ambrose Akinmusire, whose new album will be released this week.
There's a vaunted place in post-bop for preternatural trumpet virtuosos: your Clifford Browns and Lee Morgans, your Freddie Hubbards and Wynton Marsalises. And by a certain light Mr. Akinmusire (pronounced ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) fits the bill. His sound is exacting, with a cutting attack offset by a smoky tone. As an improviser he strives for the unexpected, hurtling through precarious intervals. His impressive new Blue Note debut — "When the Heart Emerges Glistening," produced by Mr. Akinmusire and the pianist Jason Moran and due out Tuesday — is chock full of trumpet heroics, from the slashing jabs of "Far But Few Between" to the mournful susurrations of "Regret (No More)."
But Mr. Akinmusire, who tends to reject the very notion of trumpet heroics, would prefer that you get to know him for the collective achievement of his band. And that impulse reflects a cardinal conviction among his peer group, one pointedly at odds with the more mercenary and self-aggrandizing aspects of jazz. Call it a postmillennial doctrine, or maybe don't call it anything yet. Whatever the term for this band-first ideal, informed by myriad sources outside jazz, Mr. Akinmusire is one of the more riveting new artists now bringing it into mainstream circulation.
"I could make an album where I'm the one who takes all the killing solos," he mused over lunch at Indian Road Café, a short walk from his practice bench and not too far from his Inwood apartment. "But I just think that if everybody feels responsible for the music, then the music will sound better." At the suggestion that his album attests to strong leadership anyway, he winced slightly. "Really?" he asked, sounding stricken. "I didn't know it sounded like my record. I thought that was the beauty of it."
Mr. Akinmusire's ace band features the saxophonist Walter Smith III, the bassist Harish Raghavan and the drummer Justin Brown — all about the same age, with overlapping history. (The self-possessed pianist on the album is Gerald Clayton; for the group's first major tour, which kicks off at the Jazz Standard next week, it will be Sam Harris.)
One article of faith for these musicians is the idea that jazz is permeable to outside influence, and therefore endlessly in flux.
"I think the music of today is a hybrid of a bunch of things," Mr. Akinmusire said. "And when it's not that, it sounds weird to me. It doesn't sound honest. How could you be of my generation and not be influenced by pop, or hip-hop? That's all you hear." Like a lot of musicians his age, he's into far-out beat makers (J Dilla, Flying Lotus), high-minded art rockers (Dirty Projectors, Radiohead) and a range of classical music ("some Chopin, Satie, Schubert"). He's also obsessed with the hyper-articulate harpist-singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom; he said he had hoped to get her as a guest on his album. (It didn't pan out.)
Then there are the extra-musical influences, which Mr. Akinmusire seemed to invest with no less enthusiasm: writers like James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and Anton Chekhov. He said he had just finished reading "Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment," by the New Age guru and aikido master George Leonard. "It talks about loving the plateau in development," Mr. Akinmusire said, with a glint of recognition.
Raised by his mother in the tough North Oakland neighborhood in California, he experienced jazz as part of a community. "A lot of the old-school local musicians were still alive," he said, recalling figures like the trumpeter Robert Porter and the pianist Ed Kelly. "So they sort of raised me and one of my best friends" — Jonathan Finlayson, another accomplished trumpet player — "and cultivated us as jazz musicians. They would pick us up from our houses and take us around to the jam sessions, put us on their gigs to sit in."
At Berkeley High School Mr. Akinmusire met other sharp musicians, including Justin Brown, who said they shared a level of intensity even then. (Mr. Akinmusire also met his girlfriend, the Iranian-born poet Shabnam Piryaei, there.) One semester of his junior year was spent practicing, as an independent study. "Only at Berkeley could you do something like that," he said. "If you were a good musician, you were just as popular as a star quarterback."
Like a star quarterback he was heavily recruited, fielding competitive offers from several leading collegiate jazz programs, though he had been planning to study math at Stanford. He ended up accepting a scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where he bristled against some of the orthodoxy in the program. But he also landed in the same combo as Mr. Smith, finding a quick rapport. "He and Walter are a great pair," said Mr. Moran, who worked with both in a master class. "They egg each other on in tremendous ways."
Mr. Akinmusire also fell in with the redoubtable alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, a mentor to many free-thinking young players. (His compatriot Mr. Finlayson is now a member of Mr. Coleman's band.) And then came his golden ticket to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance, a two-year postgraduate program then based at the University of Southern California.
The Monk Institute upholds an ideal of apprenticeship, admitting just six or seven students in each class and putting them to work as a band, with coaching from the likes of Herbie Hancock, the institute's chairman, and Wayne Shorter, who is on its board. Mr. Akinmusire imposed an extra condition for himself. "I said the only way I was going to go was if all my friends got in," he recalled, referring to Mr. Smith, the saxophonist Tim Green and the bassist Joe Sanders. "We drove to the airport together. They all got in, so I saw that as a sign."
Terence Blanchard, then the artistic director of the Monk Institute, said he hadn't heard about that pact, though it didn't surprise him. Still, he added, Mr. Akinmusire couldn't help but make an impression: "His thinking is not limited to what's normally referred to as trumpet technique. It's as if he's always had this idea of what his music should be, and the limitations of the instrument didn't deter him from that."
Right after finishing the program in 2007 Mr. Akinmusire entered the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, another signature Monk Institute initiative. At the semifinals in Los Angeles he played thrillingly, with poise and vision. During a closed-door deliberation by the judges — noted trumpeters including Mr. Blanchard, Clark Terry and Herb Alpert — the only debate involved second and third place. Mr. Akinmusire was the clear consensus winner. "We heard some great trumpet players today," Mr. Alpert said. "He's an artist."
Mr. Akinmusire's new album bears out that point. (He has a previous album, "Prelude," recorded in a hurry for the Fresh Sound New Talent label. It's not at all a bad first effort, but he seems embarrassed by it now.) "When the Heart Emerges Glistening" features songs conceived within the last year or two, in most cases with elaborate back stories.
For a turbulent tone poem called "Tear Stained Suicide Manifesto," Mr. Akinmusire wrote a five-page narrative, with dialogue, so that the music formed a kind of soundtrack. (Mr. Moran's roiling pianism contributes to the effect.) The process was similar for "Confessions to My Unborn Daughter," which opens the album on a note of dark dramatic tension. "Some of my songs have lyrics that will never see the light of day," Mr. Akinmusire said, naming "Henya" and "With Love," two of the album's luminous ballads. "Most of the time the band members don't even know."
Some of that secretive inspiration did find its way onto the album, through "My Name is Oscar," a track consisting only of Mr. Brown's furious drumming and Mr. Akinmusire's dispassionate recitation of a poem. It's a response to the infamous 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant III, by a Bay Area transit officer. But the drum solo was actually extracted from an unused take of one of Mr. Smith's songs and repurposed in the studio. That strategy came from Mr. Moran, who adapted it from the revered performance artist Joan Jonas.
"I said, 'You're only going to have one chance to do this first record for Blue Note,' " Mr. Moran recalled. "Ambrose wanted to address this incident in his music, and I encouraged him to do it."
In any case, the blunt emotionalism of the track almost supersedes its social critique, falling in line with the tonal framework of the album. "I believe that when you wear everything on your sleeve, you can actually interact with people honestly," Mr. Akinmusire said. Candor means everything to him, so he doesn't hesitate to divulge that after he finishes touring behind the new album, sometime next year, he plans to move back to California, to be closer to his mother and to live a more balanced life.
Presumably he'll find another park bench, though the more pressing issue might be the status of his band. "I think you reach a point as a musician where you can't go any further alone," he said, inadvertently alluding to the plateau. "And I think everybody in my band has sort of reached that level. When I'm playing with other people, it's hard to produce, because I don't have that relationship. But when I play with my band, it's endless."
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