Ronnie Scott’s, London
The young American trumpeter led a set of scalding jazz improv that veered between lyrical delicacy and fierce drama
There was a wilder edginess to Ambrose Akinmusire’s opening set at Ronnie Scott’s than formerly on the astonishing young American musician’s UK live shows – and not just from him, but from the partners who have been at his side since his widely hailed emergence as one of jazz’s all-time trumpet originals seven years ago. Akinmusire has lately been composing more and working with string quartets and genre-bending singers such as Theo Bleckmann and Cold Specks. But this gig with regulars Sam Harris (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Justin Brown (drums) was the kind of scalding real-time fusion of haunting themes and collective jazz improv only possible for players who can read each other like books, and anticipate the coming pages, too.
Alternations of low-volume lyrical delicacy and fierce drama characterised the show, with the undemonstrative Akinmusire initially exhaling a sensuous trumpet melody of long, swerving tones and ringing high sounds against Harris’s slow piano vamp. The reverie ended without warning in a percussive acceleration to a fast, blustery postbop melody hounded by Harris’s now slamming chordwork, and a long Akinmusire improvisation of tumbling uptempo descents and plaintive, early-Miles cries that seemed to hang in a parallel dimension to the onrushing rhythm.
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