"Ambrose Akinmusire - The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier To Paint"
Whoa - no posts on this album? It's been a steady morning album for me since its release in March. Akinmusire is one of the most interesting major label jazz artists I can think of right now... paradoxically both traditional and iconoclastic in sound, almost bridging "new" classical characteristics with a range of canonical jazz structures and approaches. That connection comes out, too, in personnel: vocalist Theo Bleckman, a minor new classical star, is featured on this album, as is a modern-leaning, genre-bending classical string quartet, the Osso String Quartet.
Whatever influences you identify, the album is engaging and difficult and pays huge dividends to the careful listener.
A couple stand-out tracks from the new one:
"Our Basement" feat. Becca Stevens (another one of my favs right now, also featured on Jose James' new album) - http://youtu.be/1Y8-z9rXcZA
No link for this one, but check out "The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits" on Spotify/Rdio/whatever - Strikingly beautiful piece: strings, trumpet, flute weave in and out of each other in long, almost droning phrases. One part Morton feldman, one part In a Silent Way. First time I heard this I think I hit repeat like three times.
4. "two albums that I know of" In response to Reply # 3
Weightless (2011) and Tea Bye Sea (2008?). Tea Bye Sea is on Rdio/Spotify; I had to purchase Weightless to hear it... both are great albums, but Weightless is definitely the more mature of the two.
She plays a few different stringed instruments, really really talented ... and her voice is just amazing.
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