Artist: Ambrose Akinmusire
Album: Honey from a Winter Stone
Genre: Avant-Garde Jazz
Label: Nonesuch Records
Released: 2025
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Muffled Screams (15:25)
- Bloomed (The Ongoing Processional of Nighas in Hoodies) (7:35)
- MYanx. (9:37)
- Owled (12:50)
- s-/Kinfolks (29:12)
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Ambrose Akinmusire holds high expectations for himself as a man and a musician. His thinking and musical practices are inseparable from one another and concern responsibility (for one's community, oneself, and one's family) and individual and collective struggle governed by the spirit of creative exploration and discovery. Honey from a Winter Stone is Akinmusire's eighth album and second for Nonesuch; it follows 2023's widely acclaimed, Grammy-nominated Owl Song with guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley. Here, he brought his live rhythm section -- pianist Sam Harris and drummer Justin Brown -- with synth sorceress Chiquita Magic, vocal improviser Kokayi, and the Mivos Quartet. Akinmusire calls this album a self-portrait that illustrates his personal belief that "I am tension and release." Further, he credits the inspiration of late composer Julius Eastman for these five long pieces and dedicates the album to him in homage.
Opener "muffled screams" is the album's pre-release single at 15-and-a-half minutes. A soft lyrical trumpet and nearly droning piano introduce the minor-key theme. Synths underscore the piano's reach to the mid- and upper registers, as bells, cymbals, and shakers frame the dialogue. Brown's tom-toms and a warm, dissonant trumpet announce the melody at 3:30 with a kick drum, two-chord piano vamp, and string quartet. Kokayi improvises lyrics (in key) that detail the composer's near-death experience and inspired the composition. The flow of crossing rhythms, strings, rounded bass sounds, and sub bass offer swirling color, nearly elastic tension, and tonal speculation. The first half of "Bloomed (the ongoing processional of nighas in hoodies)" is played by a string quartet that collides with post-bop bass, drums, piano, and a knotty, gritty trumpet solo as the strings pulse and flow in the backdrop. "MYanx." (pronounced "my angst") opens with an Afro-Latin drum solo before Chiquita Magic's synth bass rolls up top playing doomy vamps. Brown shifts to breakbeat funk under Kokayi's rap about the societal and personal needs for health -- economic, emotional, mental, and physical -- and love. Akinmusire fills out his spoken lines as piano cascades with strings through it all with a dreamlike texture. The first half of "Owled" is an impressionist-esque string quartet. Mivos expresses two dovetailing melodies. Halfway through its nearly 13 minutes, the piano enters. At four-and-a-half minutes, funky drums and loops, synth bassline, and Kokayi's words elucidate struggle in finger-popping jazz-hop. A third section highlights a chamber quintet with piano framed by ambience, and a sub bassline -- washed-out cymbals usher in Akinmusire's modal solo before the band returns in abstract jazz fusion. The 29-minute "s-Kinfolks" is a sprawl. Recorded after a night of clubbing and drinking, it reflects the late-night ethos and takes many harmonic and rhythmic chances, yet holds together effortlessly through its many sections -- some composed, some improvised -- allowing for multiple instances of tension and release. Honey from a Winter Stone is arguably the most forward-thinking, emotionally vulnerable, and moving album in Akinmusire's catalog. It offers an intimate musical language that transcends genres while being at home in them all.
Review by Thom Jurek