Ambrose Akinmusire
Honey from a Winter Stone

Ambrose Akinmusire has never been a conventional artist. His career has been a continuous sonic exploration, a synthesis of jazz, chamber music, hip-hop, and experimentation. With "Honey from a Winter Stone," the Californian trumpeter and composer takes this exploration to a new level, crafting an album that moves naturally between classical structures and the unpredictability of improvisation, between the lyricism of his trumpet and the vigor of hip-hop rhythms, between the delicacy of strings and the rawness of spoken words. If the previous "Origami Harvest" had already laid the foundation for this sonic hybrid, here Akinmusire achieves an expressive maturity that makes each element perfectly cohesive, never forced or superfluous.
The album opens with "muffled screams," a 15-minute track that perfectly embodies the concept of tension and release so dear to the musician. The piece, inspired by a near-death experience Akinmusire had, unfolds like a drama in multiple acts: a melancholic trumpet and a trembling piano introduce the listener to a suspended, almost ethereal atmosphere, before Kokayi's intervention—singer, rapper, and improviser—gives the piece a new narrative dimension. The entrance of the Mivos Quartet amplifies the tension, and Justin Brown's drumming leads the whole into an emotional crescendo that explodes in a climax of pure expressive power.
If "muffled screams" is a statement of intent, "Bloomed" and "MYanx" confirm Akinmusire's ability to effortlessly blend seemingly distant sonic worlds. The former is a sonic journey where the string quartet draws obsessive lines on which the trumpet dances with controlled ferocity, while the latter is an exploration of anxiety and mental health in the black community, where the hip-hop groove intertwines with jazz and Kokayi's words become a real rhythmic instrument.
In "Owled," Akinmusire stages a play of mirrors between classicism and contemporaneity: the track begins as a piece of chamber music with elegant lines for strings and piano, then transforms into an explosive mix of jazz and hip-hop. Akinmusire's trumpet enters late, almost on tiptoe, but when it does, it's a liberatory cry, a voice seeking answers in a fragmented world.
But it is with "s-/Kinfolks," the massive 29-minute concluding piece, that Akinmusire signs his masterpiece. Here the album completely opens up, becoming a suite in constant transformation, a sonic fresco that traverses diverse musical landscapes with surprising cohesion. The album closes in a sort of emotional fade-out, leaving the listener with the sensation of having experienced something unique.
With "Honey from a Winter Stone," Ambrose Akinmusire once again proves to be one of the most visionary composers and instrumentalists of our time. His music is an act of resistance, a deep investigation into the fears, struggles, and hopes of the black community, a bridge between the past and future of jazz. An album that defies any definition, where beauty coexists with disorder, harmony with dissonance, tradition with innovation. And it is precisely in this tension that its extraordinary charm lies.