Akinmusire heads to SFJazz to honor mentors
East Bay trumpeter will debut ambitious new orchestral suite
Ever since Ambrose Akinmusire was a Berkeley High Jazz Band standout in the late 1990s, Bay Area audiences have witnessed the trumpeter deliver gripping concerts in dozens of different settings.
But even his most ardent fans have never seen him give a performance quite like his appearance last month at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. Featured in the West Coast premiere of “Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration,” he played an unaccompanied rendition of “West End Blues” that both referenced Louis Armstrong's epochal 1928 recording and gracefully traversed a dizzying century of jazz history.
“It's one of those things that every trumpet player knows and has their own interpretation of, like `Stardust,' but playing unaccompanied is not something you hear trumpeters do a lot,” said Akinmusire, 39, on a recent telephone call while monitoring his 6-year-old son's bath time. He settles into the SFJazz Center for a four-night run tonight through Sunday (and plays two shows with his quartet at The Guild Theatre in Menlo Park on April 9).
Akinmusire was well-prepared for the “Two Wings” assignment, as he recently spent several days working on a solo horn project in Paris, where he rented out the reverberant Church of St. Eustache to rehearse. While that album is based on spontaneous improvisation rather than tunes, he saw the Zellerbach performance as presenting a similar challenge, “maintaining space and painting the air with beauty,” he said.
As an SFJazz resident artistic director he'll be working on a much larger canvas tonight and Friday in the Miner Auditorium, where he's premiering “Porter,” a 30-piece orchestral suite dedicated to the veteran players who nurtured him as a teenager. Named for the late trumpeter Robert Porter, Akinmusire's first jazz mentor, the piece is built on a rhythm section featuring Los Angeles piano star Gerald Clayton, San Francisco bassist Marcus Shelby and Oakland-reared New York drummer Savannah Harris.
Mr. Porter, as Akinmusire still refers to the bebop horn player, isn't the only late jazz mentor he's honoring with the suite. He also cites drummer Donald “Duck” Bailey, saxophonist Bishop Norman Williams, pianist Ed Kelly and trumpeter Khalil Shaheed, who founded the Oaktown Jazz Workshop where the budding Akinmusire and Harris gained invaluable instruction from working musicians.
“I also consider Marcus Shelby a mentor,” Akinmusire said. “He was the first person to hire me for consecutive gigs.”
He had initially conceived of “Porter” as a multimedia production incorporating video and interviews, similar to “Banyan,” Akinmusire's evolving suite that also explores the essential role of mentorship and oral tradition in jazz and society at large. “But in `Banyan' I don't play very much,” he said. “This was way more personal, based on where I'm from and where I'm living. I want to imagine the compositions are these specific people, really conjuring them into the space.”
If there's an unspoken agenda with “Porter,” it's offering some recompense for artists embedded in the Bay Area scene who were too often undervalued as “local players” rather than celebrated as masters. Paradoxically, with their accessibility and commitment to working with young musicians, “you didn't know they were famous or contributed so much to the music,” Akinmusire said.
“I'm so lucky to have gotten from each one the importance of finding your own identity and expressing that, and understanding that you're part of a continuum.”
On Saturday and Sunday, Akinmusire debuts the trio Owl Song, which launches a new relationship with New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley and extends a collaboration with guitarist Bill Frisell. They've performed in a duo setting several times, starting in 2014 when Akinmusire was artist-in-residence at the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
A few weeks before the pandemic first shutdown New York City he and Frisell did a four-night duo run at the Blue Note, “playing some of my tunes and some of his,” Akinmusire said. “It was just an excuse to create and explore together.”
He used a bass-less format on his 2018 album “Origami Harvest” and found that removing the sonic element that binds the ensemble together opens up space in an intriguing way. “I'm interested in what happens when things are rubbing up against each other, when there's a little friction,” he said.
Ranging across the broad expanse of American music, Owl Song provides an intimate setting for exploring with another musician who's helped shape his vision. “What I love about Bill is his curiosity,” Akinmusire said. “It's beautiful the way he's been able to maintain that for such a long career. He's one of my role models. He's still questioning and pushing.”