Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire – Owl Song (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:02 minutes | 705 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Nonesuch

Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, guitarist Bill Frisell, and drummer Herlin Riley keep things stripped to their essence on Owl Song. And like the title’s avian creature, these topnotch musicians clearly have sensitive hearing. The result is attuned, attentively crafted music that wastes no notes as it conveys emotional heft.

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Ambrose Akinmusire – Owl Song (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:42:02 minutes | 704 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover

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Ambrose Akinmusire – Beauty is Enough (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:42 minutes | 800 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Origami Harvest

Jazz trumpet virtuoso Ambrose Akinmusire is known for his “unfurling lines that confound expectation” (Chicago Tribune) and the “strong aesthetic compass” (The New York Times) that guides his compositions.

“Playing solo has just been something that’s been in the back of my head,” he says. The appeal, he adds, is the beauty that lives in sitting with oneself — and that being enough.” “I think when you have a lot of technique and you can play almost everything that’s in your head, it’s hard to commit to beauty. It’s hard to not do the flashy stuff,” says Akinmusire. “So I wanted to do a solo project that is just about sitting in the center of the beauty. The center of self, which is, for me, beauty.”

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Ambrose Akinmusire – The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:19 minutes | 1,64 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

Ambrose Akinmusire brings his artistic vision to the next level with the imagined savior is far easier to paint, his second release for Blue Note Records. Akinmusire takes a more compositional turn on the imagined savior…, writing 12 of the 13 tracks and producing the album himself.

While Akinmusire’s virtuoso trumpet is still very present on the imagined savior…, it coexists in a larger sonic framework than before. “Composition is what I’ve been focusing on the last few years,” the trumpeter says. “I want to be able to write a song and not have it need improvisation.” He continues: “The last album was about me — about things that I was experiencing and trying to change or accept about myself. The inspiration for this album is things outside of myself: people that I know, documentaries that I’ve watched, characters that I’ve made up.”

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Ambrose Akinmusire – Origami Harvest (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:50 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

After two staggering studio albums (When the Heart Emerges Glistening in 2011 and The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint in 2014) and one brilliant live album (A Rift in Decorum in 2017), all three released on Blue Note, Ambrose Akinmusire has changed gear with a multifaceted and ambitious work that mixes jazz, string quartet, poetry and rap. The Californian trumpeter has never been a stranger to taking a step into the unknown, but Origami Harvest is without a doubt his most daring work to date. And the most mind-boggling! At his side, pianist Sam Harris, drummer Marcus Gilmore, saxophonist Walter Smith III and, rather more unexpected, the Mivos string quartet and Victor Vázquez (alias Kool A.D.), previously an MC with hip-hop outfit Das Racist.

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Ambrose Akinmusire – On The Tender Spot Of Every Calloused Moment (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 48:11 minutes | 910 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

The first note you hear on Ambrose Akinmusire’s fifth studio album “on the tender spot of every calloused moment” is his own – a somber yet vibrant tone that conveys jazz and the blues in equal measure. In years past, this wouldn’t be the case; Akinmusire is a bandleader who foregrounds collective improvisation. So to hear him take the lead on “Tide of Hyacinth” is a bold leap: Akinmusire not only asserts himself as one of the best trumpeters in the world, he’s using his voice to dissect the complexity of black life in America. Yet he isn’t trying to summon gloom, he’s unpacking it all. Through his trumpet comes the breath of a black man who’s seen the best and worst of the country, and harnesses it into 49 minutes of gorgeous, shape-shifting art.

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Ambrose Akinmusire – A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:56:24 minutes | 2,22 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

Hailed by NPR as “one of the most talked-about names in contemporary jazz,” trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire has proven himself an artist of rare ability and wide-ranging aesthetic interests on his previous Blue Note releases. With his expansive double album A Rift in Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard, Akinmusire reaches a new pinnacle with his longtime pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown: they join a distinguished strata of jazz artists who’ve made live recordings at the hallowed New York City venue.

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