Ambrose Akinmusire

[mrjazzman]

I can't understand what the fuss is all about. I purchased his first two releases to try my best to hear this kid. I'm sorry but this 64 yr old be/hardbop guy cannot hear this kid. IMHO, his sounds like sophisticated elevator music. No swing, no fingerpopin, foot/toe tapping involved, purely cerebral. Pretty music, beautiful music? Yes, no doubt about it. But all while I'm listening, my feet are still and my fingers are not popping. He's appearing at Yoshi's in Oakland on Tue 6-24-2014 and after re listening to sound samples of his releases(including the new one)I'm having second thoughts about hearing this elevator music live. On one of his releases he even gimmics up the Golson classic Stablemates. Maybe I'm having third thoughts about going. I've read otherwise, but I don't hear any lineage here. Do you? Same story with Walter Smith III who is a member of Akinmusire's quintet. There was a big fuss about him, same cerebral elevator music. What say you..........

[xybert]

Didn't mind him as a sideman on the Chris Dingman (Harris Eisenstadt's Canada day, Steve Lehman Octet) album Waking Dreams (a mainstreamish album that deserves to be wider known). I feel like i might have heard and not minded him as a sideman elsewhere. Haven't checked out his leader dates aside from listening to some Amazon samples. I think the best way to approach guys like Akinmusire is to ignore the fuss surrounding them. Having said that, I probably won't get round to giving him a proper listen unless someone around here for example gives a strong recommendation, as i can't keep up with all the contemporary stuff that i want to as it is.

[Clunky]

I'd not heard of him when I saw him with John Escreet's band( a number of years ago) I was blown away. A soulful guy with technique and plenty of feeling. What I've heard on disc hasn't quite matched that initial exposure but he's one to watch.

Edited June 22, 2014 by Clunky

[Van Basten II]

Didn't hear any elevator music when I saw him live either that or your elevators are more interesting than ours

[mrjazzman]

Re: Waking Dreams by Chris Dingman, on 11 of the 14 cuts, same elevator music for my ears, obviously xybert, you hear something different

[Larry Kart]

I can't understand what the fuss is all about. I purchased his first two releases to try my best to hear this kid. I'm sorry but this 64 yr old be/hardbop guy cannot hear this kid. IMHO, his sounds like sophisticated elevator music. No swing, no fingerpopin, foot/toe tapping involved, purely cerebral. Pretty music, beautiful music? Yes, no doubt about it. But all while I'm listening, my feet are still and my fingers are not popping. He's appearing at Yoshi's in Oakland on Tue 6-24-2014 and after re listening to sound samples of his releases(including the new one)I'm having second thoughts about hearing this elevator music live. On one of his releases he even gimmics up the Golson classic Stablemates. Maybe I'm having third thoughts about going. I've read otherwise, but I don't hear any lineage here. Do you? Same story with Walter Smith III who is a member of Akinmusire's quintet. There was a big fuss about him, same cerebral elevator music. What say you..........

Only time I heard him was as a sideman on a David Binney album "Barefooted Town." Cerebral elevator music just about describes it, but I'm not even sure about "cerebral." What A.A. played struck me as bland, disjointed noodling, maybe like an "advanced" Hugh Masekla? Indeed, A.A.'s vibe on that album seemed to have infected the previously interesting IMO Binney with the same tendencies. Made me think about getting rid of what else by Binney I had.

[JSngry]

Not appealing to the aging jazz audience, obviously!

What I've heard of him sounds, to me, like some guy playing what he knows in contexts that allow him to do it best he can. That part of it, I like. The rest, not particularly relevant to my lifestyle, one way or the other, generally, but I don't know that I'd rather take the stairs than ride the elevator, I mean, I don't hear torture or anything going on, although maybe if I do confess to sometimes having other body parts set in motion besides the toes and feet, so maybe it's part of this 21st Century Changing Global Demographic thing that looks at toe/feet tapping as a nice but essential restricted method of bodily expression.

But really, I don't know, things are different now, I'll let them who are involved decide what's good for them.

[xybert]

Re: Waking Dreams by Chris Dingman, on 11 of the 14 cuts, same elevator music for my ears, obviously xybert, you hear something different

Oh well, it sucks when it happens but we all purchase an album that we don't dig every now and again.

[CJ Shearn]

Ambrose new record really has thought provoking compositions....... Jazz for me doesn't have to have to swing in the conventional way for it to be good, and I love hard bop, he's a really killing player. MrJazzman, I think if you hear him on Jack DeJohnette's "Sound Travels" you'll change your mind a bit.

[Larry Kart]

Not appealing to the aging jazz audience, obviously!

FWIW, don't think that what I didn't care for in A.A.'s playing on that Binney album had anything to do my age or his. I like a lot of players who are younger and edgier than either of those guys (heard three of them on Thursday -- Josh Berman, Jason Roebke, and Frank Rosaly, then the next day listened to relatively young alto saxophonist Greg Ward tear things up on one of Roebke's two new albums). Again, it's A.A.'s relative blandness IMO that put me off.

[JSngry]

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

[Larry Kart]

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

Really? Could you give me an example from your own experience. I mean, when I was about 10 or so I dug "Lisbon Antigua" and Something Smith and the Redheads's "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" and Perry Como doing "Kokomo"and maybe some Les Baxter for a minute (no Leroy Anderson, though later on Cannonball played the s--- out of "Serenata"), but it's been my experience and observation over the years that young people tend to go for some version of peppiness/excitement.

[xybert]

Not appealing to the aging jazz audience, obviously!

FWIW, don't think that what I didn't care for in A.A.'s playing on that Binney album had anything to do my age or his. I like a lot of players who are younger and edgier than either of those guys (heard three of them on Thursday -- Josh Berman, Jason Roebke, and Frank Rosaly, then the next day listened to relatively young alto saxophonist Greg Ward tear things up on one of Roebke's two new albums). Again, it's A.A.'s relative blandness IMO that put me off.

Thanks for this perspective. It often feels like guys like Akinmusire (or Christian Scott or Esperanza Spalding or Grace Kelly or whoever) get held up like "pfffffft this is what's happening right now hence contemporary jazz sucks and young people have no taste" when there are other more interesting options aplenty.

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

There are only two kinds of blandness: the blandness i like, and the other kind.

Tons of canonised blandness out there. Arguably it's in the ear of the behearer i suppose.

[JSngry]

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

There are only two kinds of blandness: the blandness i like, and the other kind.

No more calls please, we have a winner!

[JSngry]

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

Really? Could you give me an example from your own experience. I mean, when I was about 10 or so I dug "Lisbon Antigua" and Something Smith and the Redheads's "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" and Perry Como doing "Kokomo"and maybe some Les Baxter for a minute (no Leroy Anderson, though later on Cannonball played the s--- out of "Serenata"), but it's been my experience and observation over the years that young people tend to go for some version of peppiness/excitement.

To me, "bland" = "common". When everything's spicy, nothing is spicy, and/or only the most extempore ends of the spectrum really stand out. Youth tends to be very able to find enthusiasm in things common, and good for youth for being able to do so, becuase in the end, most things are common/bland.

By the same token, the devil's advocate wants to play discernment = a ongoing diminishing inability to find excitement in things common, or at least an ever-increasing need to be self-consciously differentiating about them. Nobody is indiscriminately discerning about what is common and what is not, and when "discerning" people celebrate the "common" it is an almost self-contradictory act of saying that, yes there is spice in the bland, which, ok, good, glad there is, agree that that there is, but objectively, say WHAT?

Discerning youth tends to be as silly and anachronistic as does indiscriminate geriatrica. Who wants to be either? Although I think it must be said that a little bit of both from beginning to end is always a good thing, or even increasing numbers of each as long as they balance. But the sliding scale thing, UH-oh, that's where she starts coming in through the bathroom window and ends up having her husband have to call Station 51. beee-booo-BOMMMMMMM.

[Larry Kart]

Finding pleasurable excitement in blandness is one of the least-appreciated pleasures and abilities of youth.

Really? Could you give me an example from your own experience. I mean, when I was about 10 or so I dug "Lisbon Antigua" and Something Smith and the Redheads's "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie" and Perry Como doing "Kokomo"and maybe some Les Baxter for a minute (no Leroy Anderson, though later on Cannonball played the s--- out of "Serenata"), but it's been my experience and observation over the years that young people tend to go for some version of peppiness/excitement.

To me, "bland" = "common". When everything's spicy, nothing is spicy, and/or only the most extempore ends of the spectrum really stand out. Youth tends to be very able to find enthusiasm in things common, and good for youth for being able to do so, becuase in the end, most things are common/bland.

To me, "common" means readily available and widely appreciated. In my circle (or rather in a nearby circle) when I was 14 or 15, one of the things musical that was readily available and widely appreciated was the work of Hank Ballard and the Moonlighters. It wasn't bland.

[JSngry]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/common

Full Definition of COMMON

1

a : of or relating to a community at large : public <work for the common good>

b : known to the community <common nuisances>

2

a : belonging to or shared by two or more individuals or things or by all members of a group <a common friend> <buried in a common grave>

b : belonging equally to two or more mathematical entities <triangles with a common base>

c : having two or more branches <common carotid artery>

3

a : occurring or appearing frequently : familiar <a common sight>

b : of the best known or most frequently seen kind —used especially of plants and animals <the common housefly>

c : vernacular 2 <common names>

4

a : widespread, general <common knowledge>

b : characterized by a lack of privilege or special status <common people>

c : just satisfying accustomed criteria : elementary <common decency>

5

a : falling below ordinary standards : second-rate

b : lacking refinement : coarse

6

: denoting nominal relations by a single linguistic form that in a more highly inflected language might be denoted by two or more different forms <common gender> <common case>

7

: of, relating to, or being common stock

— com·mon·ly adverb

— com·mon·ness noun

We Southerners of a certain age use it to refer to something in that polite-but-unquestionably-lacking-in-approval/enthusiasm, kinda like Martin Williams and chewing gum, I would suspect.

So, anyway, since dogs can smell time (it's true, saw it on Nova), then people can taste culture. As with all flavor, what might be initially stimulating may in fact turn out to be anything but, only the shock of the unfamiliar gives it the sensation of "newness" aka "spice".

Not to say that Hank Ballard & The Midnighters were actually "bland", but time/place, they were hardly the "spiciest" thing happening even in their own local kitchen, if you know what I mean. They were, in fact, pretty "common", and really, divorced from the nostalgia of newness (again, time/place), yes, bland, overall. Does "There's A Thrill" still bring a sweat to the brow? Hell, I turn it off more times than not. There's NOT a thrill up on that hill, y'all go along without me, ok?

But youth, youth has neither time nor energy nor motivation to think about all that, do they. That's a good thing, I think, because if you start out numb to any taste, where is there to go? To hell even harder that's where!

OTOH, to look at it as to be put in another way..."bland" must surely not be a baseline (and therefore negate the common, if that would be your end-point), because it connotates a lack. A negative deviation from the norm. It's like bland isn't the absence of flavor, it's negative flavor. Not "bad" flavor - negative flavor. But if common is the baseline, then where is the neutral of flavor? Neither spicy nor bland fit that bill (although they can be counted upon to pay it). So me, I will stick with the common/bland equaliviation, at least until a better deal comes along.

Perhaps this leads to the conclusion/suspicion that most things in fact are bland (or at least flavor neutral) and that it is only our referenetials of experientials that imbue it with any lean one way or the other. And in that regard, Youth, ftw.

Apart from that, though, I have arthritis in my lower extremities and can move my ass much more readily and/or reflexively than I can tap my toes or pat my feet. With that in mind, an elevator ride with Ambrose Akinmusire's music would not be a particular inconvenience (although to be fair, it might not be a particular pleasure either. But nothing is worse than entering an empty-except-for-the-smell-of-departed-rider-fart-air elevator ride, and no way do I not get on the Ambrose Akinmusire elevator and get on that one instead. No way, let's have some perspective on all of this elevator rideiness, ok? Now, Grace Kelly elevator, that on...I think I'll take the steps, tell everybody I might be late/exhausted/hospitalized/embalmed because of taking the steps rather than the Grace Kelly elevator, but that's my choice to make, ok, godblessamerica) . Past that, I have no opinion of more than passing relevance to the General Global Condition, and will gladly stipulate to that effect.

Neither

nor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwkYOsuMERE

oooWHOM

[mjazzg]

I enjoyed his playing with Steve Coleman and I was impressed with his first leader date "Prelude:To Cora". That sounded like a young, frech voice with plenty to say - good playing and compostions. The signng to Blue note seems to have polished some necessary edge away and i don't necessarily disagree with 'bland' and think the productions of the two Blue Notes detracts, there's a fluffiness that seems to sap some good playing of any real bite.

Compositionally I hear him having too much to say and not quite yet having the editorial skills to hone it - I often feel the somewhat portentous and lengthy album titles are indicative overall of where the whole package is at. Yet I feel there's still enough talent in there to keep listening.

[relyles]

I am a fan of Akinmusire - largely after hearing him live at Smalls with Mark Turner's quartet. Then he played with a lot of imagination and fire. I have generally "appreciated" his three recordings as a leader. I have also been able to hear a number of radio broadcasts of live performances. I think what he is trying to do comes across better in a live setting than on some of the productions of the recordings. Live, it is generally a quintet blowing. Yes, the compositions at times seem to be clever, just for the sake of cleverness, but IMO they work live when the energy of the setting inspires the musicians.

[clifford_thornton]

I didn't get the fuss upon hearing him, but it wouldn't be the first time. There just wasn't enough "there" there for me.

[jlhoots]

I liked him live / in person.

The CDs not so much.

[xybert]

I had a listen to 'The Imagined Savior' on spotify last night. I definitely think he's got some flavour in his playing. Reminded me a bit of Jonathan Finlayson in places, both playing and composition wise, at least on the tracks that didn't feature strings and vocals with lyrics. Interesting that they've both spent time with Steve Coleman. Not an album that i'll buy (although the first couple of tracks did have me having a look on Amazon) but i'll keep an eye out for his future endeavours. Will be a bit of a 'case by case' guy for me i think.

[sonnyhill]

I am a fan of Akinmusire - largely after hearing him live at Smalls with Mark Turner's quartet. Then he played with a lot of imagination and fire. I have generally "appreciated" his three recordings as a leader. I have also been able to hear a number of radio broadcasts of live performances. I think what he is trying to do comes across better in a live setting than on some of the productions of the recordings. Live, it is generally a quintet blowing. Yes, the compositions at times seem to be clever, just for the sake of cleverness, but IMO they work live when the energy of the setting inspires the musicians.

I was at one of those shows at Smalls with Akinumusire as part of the Turner quartet/quintet also. Akinmusire's playing was excellent and the reasons that he is considered a bright light on trumpet was readily apparent during the sets that I attended. In my opinion, Turner's playing was also particularly inspired at those shows.

The Smalls dates -- two sets each from June 16 and 17, 2010 -- are archived in the Smalls audio archive under Mark Turner's leadership with Ben Street on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums. Akinmusire's name is not listed on the Smalls website. David Virelles joins the group on piano on some of the selections; he is also not listed on the Smalls website. Ben Street has always been a favorite of mine and was superb. Marcus Gilmore's drumming that night was also markedly good.

I listen to those Smalls recordings all of the time.

I have Akinmusire's latest cd. It's not bad, but it is a bit disjointed and aimless for my tastes; too much going on in totally different directions. I liked the first cd on BN a little better than the latest, but I feel that neither properly represents how uniquely talented he is.

[JSngry]

Well shit, I just realized that I've been confusing this guy with Lionel Loueke and responding accordingly. So all of you who think I'm an idiot, here's some bonus points, on me.

[clifford_thornton]

Never listened to Loueke.