Ambrose Akinmusire

Ambrose Akinmusire is at the centre reaching out. An artist in the truest sense of the word, Akinmusire has spent the last 20 years connecting worlds, bringing diverse influences and an intuitive flair for innovation to his work, whether garnering four Grammy nominations, releasing albums on labels like Blue Note and Nonesuch, collaborating with choreographers and filmmakers, or as an educator in his position as Director of Jazz at Stanford University. Widely acclaimed and impossible to pin down, Akinmusire is shaping the cultural conversation beyond music as one of the most urgent creative voices in contemporary America.

Akinmusire’s path was always going to be unique. Born into a church-going family, he played gospel music from a young age, learned his chops on piano and drums before adopting the trumpet as his instrument of choice. Growing up with a hip-hop soundtrack in ‘90s Oakland, California, Akinmusire gravitated towards jazz and was exposed to the full spectrum of the form, seeing Art Ensemble of Chicago perform one week and Ellis Marsalis the next. Inspired by the way in which Roy Hargrove transcended genre, he was picked up by Steve Coleman, dipping out of school at 19 to play with jazz greats like Joe Henderson and Billy Higgins and developing a sound of rare clarity that garnered praise from across the country.

Propelled into the wider public consciousness, Akinmusire has gone on to pick up a succession of prestigious international awards - such as Le Grand Prix de l’Académie du Jazz in France, Germany’s ECHO jazz award and the Paul Acket Award from The Netherlands - and voted best trumpet player in the DownBeat Critics Poll 11 times in the last 14 years. He has received grants, commissions and prizes from Doris Duke Foundation, the MAP Fund, Kennedy Center, Berlin Jazz Festival and Monterey Jazz Festival. In 2026, he was awarded the Chanel Next Prize in recognition of the broader impact of his practice.

And yet, although a prodigious talent in the formal sense, it was the mentors who taught him of the social, political, and emotional context to the music who moved Akinmusire most. Can you play in a way that will make someone dance? Can you play in a way that will make someone cry? “I’m looking for what bypasses logic, what bypasses my brain and goes straight to my heart” he says. “Because intuition for me is the highest form of intellect.”

By the time he released his debut album Prelude ... To Cora in 2008, Akinmusire had already outgrown the categories imposed on him. He was listening to everything from drum’n’bass to opera to contemporary minimalism, pushing his idiosyncratic approach to composition and developing an obsession with Björk, whose capacity to crack open a note and reveal a universe reflected the spirit of exploration Akinmusire brings to his own music.

Performing with the likes of Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Ayer and Jason Moran, who themselves were extending jazz towards a wider audience, Akinmusire signed to Blue Note Records, beginning an association that saw him release 5 albums between 2011 and 2020. The experience would bring Akinmusire to a deeper understanding of his artistry, whether on 2018’s formally experimental Origami Harvest or On The Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment which takes aim at the gentrification of the Bay Area and was released shortly after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

In that sense, Akinmusire has always sought to connect his music to a deeper purpose. He played with Joni Mitchell for A Portrait in Song in 2013 and on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, placing his practice at the centre of diverse forms – so-called high and low art, hip-hop and classical music, academia and what he calls a more “street” approach.

The uniting principle is less about labels and more about sensibility. Leaving Blue Note in 2020 allowed Akinmusire to give voice to these musical instincts. 

“The three albums that I have released since then have been an investigation on beauty,” he says. “It is about submitting: Beauty in being a conduit, beauty in being egoless, beauty in simplicity, but also in complexity. Beauty in sitting in a single moment.”

His subsequent albums, Beauty is Enough (Origami Harvest, 2023), Owl Song (Nonesuch, 2023), Honey From A Winter Stone (Nonesuch, 2025) and new co-led recording with Mary Halvorsen Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings (Nonesuch, 2026) hear Akinmusire giving license to this creativity, whether on solo trumpet, in a trio with Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley, or at the centre of cast of collaborators. As a connector of people and curator of sound worlds, he is just getting started.

Akinmusire has now launched the label Origami Harvest to release his own music, embracing the lineage of black innovation to take control of his masters and create a community around which he can express himself and uplift others. “I am focussed on beauty and greatness as a form of resistance,” he continues. “At a time where there are so many ugly things and the bar is so low, to still try and be great and empathetic and beautiful is really going against the status quo. It's my way of resisting.”

In 2025, Akinmusire began a 5-year tenure as Director of Jazz at Stanford University, in recognition of a teaching career that has seen him work at major institutions across the country, and as Artistic Director of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance. It is a position which Akinmusire sees as both in dialogue with and integral to his work as an artist – an exchange of communication and empathy which goes to the heart of his practice, whether film scores or dance productions, music or curatorial work.

“There is beauty in realising that your life is your music, and your music is your life,” he reflects. This, ultimately, is what it means to trust your intuition and stand in the centre, reaching out. It is the only way Akinmusire knows how.     

Written by Anton Spice