08/31/11

Story by Diane Carroll

"Miles Davis Experience"

Ambrose Akinmusire jazz quintet to showcase Miles Davis career

Trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his band will appear Friday, Sept. 30, at Johnson County Community College in a musical and historical production that recalls the post-World War II jazz of Miles Davis.

The Miles Davis Experience: 1949-1959, a collaboration with Blue Note Records, recaptures the sound and history of those years through the lens of the music that Davis created. The show includes live music performed in the manner it was first presented, with photos and film clips brought together by a beat poet-style narrator.

The show will begin at 8 p.m. in Yardley Hall of the Carlsen Center. Greg Carroll, the CEO of the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, will give a pre-show talk at 7 p.m.

The production is designed to introduce Davis to a younger generation unfamiliar with the iconic innovator. It also will give the audience a chance to see Akinmusire, a 29-year-old who captured the attention of the jazz world last April with his Blue Note Records debut When the Heart Emerges Glistening with pianist Jason Moran.

By following Davis’ musical development in linear chronology, the performance tells the story of post-war America with its challenges, optimism, civil rights struggles and milestones. The audience also will learn about the creative cauldron of new music that Davis pioneered and nurtured – bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz and jazz fusion.

Earlier this year, The New York Times called Akinmusire “a trumpeter on the verge of jazz stardom” and the Los Angeles Times named him one of its 2011 “Faces to Watch.”

Modest, Akinmusire would like you to know his band collectively with saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown.

Akinmusire was raised in Oakland, Calif., and was a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble. In 2007, he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition.

Tickets are $35 and $25. They are available by calling the box office at 913-469-4445 or visiting www.jccc.edu/TheSeries.