The winners of the 63rd GRAMMY Awards were announced on March 14 during a ceremony…
Tag: Ambrose Akinmusire
Remember record stores? Remember the thrill of turning your friends on to new music by…
Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire rebukes the notion that musical abstraction is inherently cerebral. Within on the tender spot of every…
In Michael Jarrett’s book Pressed for All Time, excerpted in this article, pioneering producer and…
Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire, one of the leading figures in jazz today, is known to use…
Saxophonist Kamasi Washington was chosen to score the hit Netflix documentary Becoming, chronicling the life…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
A funk master’s first studio album in years; a musical “dissection” of black life in…
Looking for some Monday motivation? We’ve got you covered! From a musical dissection of the…
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
Identity and jazz, for me, go hand in hand. Much of my own discovery of this music was shaped by racial and familial-like ties to its artists, many of whom became the mothers and fathers I never had. But the connection goes far deeper than I had imagined.
Identity and jazz, for me, go hand in hand. Much of my own discovery of this music was shaped by racial and familial-like ties to its artists, many of whom became the mothers and fathers I never had. But the connection goes far deeper than I had imagined.
Over the last year, a lot of memorable albums have been released. As we always…
Eighty years ago, a German immigrant and passionate jazz fan named Alfred Lion produced his…
Moldejazz, verging on its milestone 60th anniversary in 2020, is the oldest and widely considered…
Like Netflix, Qwest TV offers plenty of binge-worthy material, including live concert recordings from festivals as prestigious as the Montreux Jazz Festival and Jazz a Vienne, masterclasses by today’s leading musicians and rare historical footage.
Summer is upon us, and with it comes the 40th edition of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal presented by TD Bank Group in collaboration with Rio Tinto. The fest is all set to take place June 26 through July 6 in downtown Montreal, with several hundred thousand people descending upon the Canadian city to experience the biggest jazz celebration in the world.
Eighty years ago, on January 6, 1939, a German immigrant named Alfred Lion produced his…
With an approach that both honors tradition and points to the future, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire…
Wolfgang Muthspiel is one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, particularly for the…
Brad Mehldau (left), Larry Grenadier, Ambrose Akinmusire, Brian Blade and Wolfgang Muthspiel.[/caption] You and Brad have incredible musical chemistry on the new album. What clicked between the two of you? What made you want to record with him? Well, [drummer] Jeff Ballard and Larry Grenadier are two musicians that I play with a lot. So I got to know Brad through them. Every time I heard him, I was just completely into his expression and his aesthetic, and of course his incredible skill as an improviser. Aesthetically, I think there is something that we share in terms of some of the classical music that he loves. The same things that had an impact on me also had an impact on him. 
The other thing that ECM does is just place their records out there in the world. It's all put out with the most tasteful promotion that exists in jazz, I would say. And this treatment is given to all albums, regardless of commercial appeal. One has a feeling that they don't pick their musicians with commercial success in mind. I really appreciate that. Sometimes you see releases of wonderful things that are definitely not going to appeal to the masses. It's just a high artistic integrity that they still keep, and I have big major respect for that. You maintained a lot of the same personnel from Rising Grace on your new album, Where the River Goes. To what extent were you trying to head in the same direction, and to what extent were you looking to branch out? I would say I had the "sound" of the band in mind, even though there's a different drummer, which makes a difference. But the way we play, for example on the song "One Day My Prince Was Gone," we're basically improvising together in a way that, it takes a while until you hear the actual melody. But we're actually playing it. It branches out into a beautiful — not abstract — but dissonant territory. Which I love. There's this kind of song element to it. The first three tunes are really "song" songs. But there's this other area where we just kind of improvise. Everybody listens to each other so well, and we can all just get into this modern musical language through improv. I love that. And it's not just playing something "out" or playing something "harsh." It's not about that. It's about an extension of the harmony. And you mentioned the change in drummers. Brian Blade was on the previous album. Eric Harland is on the new one. What does Eric bring to the table? Well, Brian I've known forever. And on this particular record, we just couldn't get everybody together on the same date. I had played with Eric before — it was while touring with Rising Grace, actually. Eric is a very different kind of drummer. The one thing he does that I really love is that he often makes a sort of energetic or aesthetic counterpoint to what you're doing. So when I play something very introverted or melancholic, he doesn't necessarily go there, because I’m already doing it. So he may be doing something else, something very dry. And so there are two kinds of fires, or two kinds of planets, that have interaction and create tension, which is great for the album. For example, for this duo that I duo with him, "Panorama," he basically starts his own role and sticks with it. It interacts with me, of course, but he's not trying to go where I am. It's a different type of drumming, which is great. And of course when it goes to something like "Blueshead," a song by Brad, then Eric also exudes this joy of swing and fun. He can bring that, too, that basic joy of being there and joy of contributing. My aesthetic can be a little dark, so it's nice to have that. It's interesting that you mention the duo stuff you did with guitar and drums. I was a big fan of your duo work with Brian in the group Fellow Travelers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwKgAQzATCU
That was interesting when I did that duo with Brian, because in the beginning, I had the feeling that I always had to express the bass. And at some point Brian said, "No, don't. It's already implied. It's there anyway. You don't always have to be thinking in terms of having another instrument, because we're a duo." That was a good lesson. What lessons do you have for aspiring jazz musicians? Just to stress the necessity of owning your craft. Apart from all the aesthetics and the finesse and the intellectual aspects of playing, you just have to really own your craft. Whether you play free or bebop or Mozart or whatever, you have to be able to perform at the highest caliber and be aware of the basic parameters that make up the language of music. The people that I play with on this album are all on that level, which is why it was so mind-blowing to play with them. They can just hear any sound that's in the room and make a spontaneous contribution to the music, without quite even knowing yet what it's going to be. That was luxurious for me. For more information on Muthspiel's album, visit the guitarist's