'A shrill repeat kew-ick during the night; That's how you recognize the tawny owl. The little owl produces a 'falsetto' KIE-ew', the long-eared owl is silent, its alarm call is a 'nasal' wrack, wrack, wrack'. That's what it says in the ANWB Bird Guide of Europe and that's what it sounds like on Saturday evening from the trumpet of Ambrose Akinmusire who performed his project 'Owl Song' performs.
Most owls don't sing, they scream, and several times the phenomenal trumpet player screeches through his instrument. Yet it is always only a momentary disruption of the slow, melodious night. Because with acclaimed guitar veteran Bill Frisell and drummer Gregory Hutchinson it is never purely abstract or impressionistic. It is what a jazz evening should be: dark, without lyrics or explanation, unpredictable and exciting and always with a safe bluesy safety net stretched by top musicians.
In the more than ten years that Akinmusire has been presenting himself to the broader jazz audience, he has developed at breakneck speed. After collaborations with Marcus Miller and Kendrick Lamar, among others, top albums were released on Blue Note, with explicit statements and a Miles Davis-like hunger and control. Now he shows himself as a thoughtful owl on his new label Nonesuch Records. The introspective sound remains intact on stage, but several times the owl leaves its roost and flies out along the edges of the city.
On this tour, drummer Herlin Riley has been replaced by Hutchinson, who can handle Riley's New Orleans style very well. If Hutchinson wrote the piece 'Mr. Riley' opens with the secondline beat of the marching bands, Frisell adds a deceptively simple guitar loop. It is then up to Akinmusire to completely unravel this simple structure in a few bars and confuse it into a tangle. A brief tendency towards free jazz on the part of the trumpet player is brought back into line by Frisell with, very exceptionally, a briefly pronounced rock sound, accompanied by militant rolls from Hutchinson.
It's the big city on a sultry night. The pace is fairly slow for an hour and a half. There is long, sweet reggae jazz, where it is striking how easily Akinmusire self-effaces, there is Frisell's minimalist style, but above all there are the remarkable contrasts between rustling foliage and the sudden screeching.
Owl Song, the project is called. Even though there are few owls singing songs, there is always the supreme boss of the twilight, the Eagle Owl. 'Sing deep, resonant OE-huh', a call that is 'surprisingly soft up close, but still audible at 1.5-4 km away'. In the moments when Akinmusire plays those round soft notes, everything is good and beautiful and royal and just as the jazz night should be.
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