Ambrose Akinmusire has been critically acclaimed as one of the most skilled trumpet players in today’s culture. His 2011 album When The Heart Emerges Glistening was named as one of New York Times’ best albums of the year and solidified his spot at the “trumpet player of his generation.” On his newest album the imagined savior is far easier to paint, Akinmusire returns with his longtime quintet—saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown—and adds a few more artists to stray away from his jazz trumpet roots that gained him such rapid fame in the brass community.
The album is an eclectic piece that proves Akinmusire’s ability to not only explore vast amounts of styles in his composition and execution, but master them. He brings in singers/lyricists—Becca Stevens, Theo Bleckmann and Cold Specks—to write and lead three of his tracks and introduces the OSSO String Quartet on a number of tracks, for an amazing mixture of music and talent.
The album opens with “Marie Christie,” a crazy, stream of consciousness piece with thrilling trumpet riffs that show Akinmusire has still got it. “As We Fight” follows with a far more structured storyline, moving from highs to lows allowing the audience to actually picture a fight (physical, verbal, mental, anything works here) as if we’re standing right in front of it. This storyline style is mimicked on later tracks such as “Vartha,” “Bubbles” and the 16-minute epic closing track “Richard”.
Stevens is introduced on the third track, the creepy (it has a definite stalker’s undertone), mesmerizing “Our Basement.” Vocals are also introduced on “Asiam,” where Bleckmann drones out a dramatic, old-fashioned hymnal tune that eventually turns out to be awesomely terrifying, and “Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child” by Specks, which is an absolutely gorgeous reflection of memories and regret.
A few tracks (“Beauty of Dissolving Portraits,” “J.E. Nilmah (Ecclesiastes 6:10),” “Inflatedbyspinning”) showcase a style that Akinmusire seems to be exploring more thoroughly on this album—a mystical, woodsy sound that could easily score a fairytale film or a Broadway musical just the same. They are really fun tracks to listen to and excellent for harvesting creativity or imagination.
As a whole, the imagined savior is far easier to paint is an epic piece filled with extreme highs, massive lows and mesmerizing in-betweens. Some aspects are definitely weird (I could do without the “Rollcall for Those Absent” interlude where a child repeats names of young people killed through acts of violence) but it all adds to the genius that is the ever-evolving Ambrose Akinmusire.
Rating: A-
