Ambrose Akinmusire, Honey From a Winter Stone, Nonesuch ***

Long form pieces

Clearly heading even more long form, even more the more expansive potentially fully orchestrated route.

More for a big classical concert hall going sort of public than a jazz club one although of course jazz fans go to both, I first heard Ambrose Akinmusire in a classical hall when he was a teenage member of the Steve Coleman Big Band playing a rare concert on the South Bank many years ago in the 1990s. He stood out even then and it wasn’t even his gig.

More recently but still quite a while back, oh around a decade ago, and by then a fully fledged player, I caught the Californian in the Pizza Express Jazz Club with his own small group when he was on Blue Note.

Since signing to Nonesuch – a far more eclectic label than Blue Note ranging widely into art, experimental and contemporary classical music as well as some limited amounts of jazz – his approach has changed.

Five pieces are here. Nearly all hugely long the last of which could just about be an album on its own the move to be a classical contemporary composer is fully paved.

‘Owled’ is like everything here very open ended and has the sort of sound environment that you could imagine the Kronos Quartet inhabiting.

Uncompromising vision

Strings get too much room. It’s uncompromising too particularly the opening track which is a harsh elegy of sorts and the vocal is like a lecture. Justin Brown’s ferocious drumming isn’t heard enough but he’s great on ‘MYanx’ which is the briefest of the pieces and lands a shade under 10 minutes. The hip-hop element is only OK.

Brown goes way back with Akinmusire to albums like When the Heart Emerges Glistening (2011) which to me is still his best album.

Recorded in a Minneapolis studio in 2023 Honey From a Winter Stone is a very serious record, but at times a bit of a chore. Nevertheless there are lots of tender moments and that Wadada Leo Smith-like clarion cry of urgency and insistent fervour. It appeals to the classical side of my listening a bit – curiously not really my jazz side that much in this case more than ever before living with his records down the years.

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