Next time somebody asks you to describe your feelings, maybe playing them the most apposite clip of an Ambrose Akinmusire trumpet solo might cut to the chase if you’re struggling for words. Akinmusire, the prizewinning 33-year-old musician from California and one of the most expressive and articulate trumpeters in any kind of contemporary music, is on a two-night stopover at the Pizza Express Jazz Club with his long-running quartet.
This quietly self-possessed innovator merges and reshuffles the familiar separate elements of conventional jazz – short tunes, long solos, climactic drum breaks – into suite-like extended pieces, but they change in mood and dynamics so much that they feel like contrasting scenes in a play.
Roll Call for Those Absent, triggered by recent African-American deaths at police hands and a spoken-word piece on Akinmusire’s new album was a dramatically gripping instrumental here, unfolded by the leader in translucent long sounds and squeezed-valve elisions, and transformed by a fierce drum soliloquy from Justin Brown that was such a stark contrast as to border on the traumatising. Gracefully pealing trumpet figures, stuttering uptempo lines and a sultry glide of swing unleashed a roller-coaster of music delivered with such conviction that when it fell silent for Harish Raghavan to produce a fragile, pure-pitched bass solo, the sense of anticipation seemed only heightened by the possibilities of what might happen next. Brown opened a new sequence with drum-hits like fireworks popping, Akinmusire played long, arching lines over an undertow from the rhythm section and imaginative pianist Sam Harris that had the cohesiveness of a single instrument, followed by a pulsing repeated trumpet note like a car horn, impassively resisting the intensifying buffeting of the drums.
In an onstage interview with broadcaster Tina Edwards, Akinmusire quoted Maya Angelou on the subject of compliments: “Don’t pick them up, and don’t lay them down.” His determination to be his own man, whatever the world’s chatter says, makes him the remarkable musician he is.
- At Pizza Express Jazz Club, London, on 15 July. Box office: 0845 602 7017.
