The Brooklyn Rail: Ambrose Akinmusire with George Grella

Ambrose Akinmusire is the top trumpeter in this year's DownBeat magazine Critics Poll—his mysterious and beautiful January set at the Winter Jazzfest, a penumbra of dark and compelling sensations that enveloped the Irving Plaza crowd, earned my vote. Winner of the 2007 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Competition, his series of albums on Blue Note records, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011), The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint (2014), A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard (2017), Origami Harvest (2018), and the newly released on the tender spot of every calloused moment (with pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, drummer Justin Brown, and some guests), have built an outstanding and personal world of modern jazz, classical chamber music, and hip hop that is tethered to all those genes, but spins in its own orbit. He spoke over the phone from his home in Oakland in late July.

George Grella (Rail): I first want to talk to you more about the technical side. This new album seems like a really big departure in terms of form from the music that you’ve put out before. Is that something that you’re consciously working on?

Ambrose Akinmusire: Yes and no. I am very aware of what I’m putting out and the order I’m putting those things out, but when I’m creating, like when I’m writing the songs, when I’m developing the songs with my band I’m just kind of letting it happen, so I think it’s pretty natural, but this album, it was a departure from my last few albums but in my eyes it’s really a sequel to the first album that I did on Blue Note.

Rail: Yeah, that’s fascinating to hear that. Tell me more about that.

Akinmusire: It’s on every level—micro, macro—with the sequencing. Even something as small as playing an intro to the album, like something I did on my first album. Also, the album cover: I’m cut, clean-shaven in a suit [on the first album] and this one, you know, I have my locks back, I’m in a hoodie, and I haven’t shaved in many months [laughter]. But on every level, I feel like it’s a sequel, and even in terms of acoustic… My other albums have had other features but this one is pretty much, for the most part up until “Genevieve” and a brief moment from “Aces,” it’s an acoustic album.