Mary Halvorson and Ambrose Akinmusire Connect to Jazz History

Guitarist Mary Halvorson and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire have been playing together for some time, both recording for prestigious Nonesuch Records. They are neighbors in the creative music community of New York City. After practicing together as a duet, they have finally performed and recorded in this format, resulting in the new Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings.

Both Akinmusire and Halvorson have developed into jazz impressionists. They lead bands and compose music that builds atmosphere and color, and provides an open but not completely free context for improvising. Both work outside the post-bop jazz “mainstream” but have been vital in defining a new center for the music. It finds new kinds of “swing” rhythms, has a wider range of harmonic language, and works in overlap with classical “new music”, presents conversation with forms of popular and electronic music, and is more likely to trace its “jazz” roots to Henry Threadgill than to Wynton Marsalis.

Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is a collection of nine songs (four composed by each performer and one conceived collaboratively) that gently mix tonal clarity and beauty with the musical quirks that each performer uses as their trademark. “Tangled Pretty” (composed by the guitarist) is as on point as a title can be and probably should have been the album’s title. Akinmusire‘s liquid trumpet style is out front, as on most tracks, playing with a highly personal tone that mixes breathy intimacy with his ability to gliss between notes with compelling control.

Halvorson‘s guitar—mostly played without a hint of distortion—provides accompanying arpeggios that are folk-like in their patterns, but you will hear the chords slip from the plain to the sublime. She also deploys her Line 6 delay pedal to generate bent tones that, across her career, pepper her often austere playing with tonal hiccups.

The story of the album includes this defining anecdote: just as they started rehearsing, Halvorson gifted one of these delay pedals to Akinmusire, who put it to quick use. So “Tangled Pretty” begins with solo trumpet that is self-accompanied by a humming chorus of trumpets running quietly through the Line 6 delay effect. The result is, indeed, a tangled but beautiful four-and-a-half minutes. This is the predominant sound of Hoverings.

“Prelude in the Ash” by Akinmusire follows a similar script: an unaccompanied trumpet played with tonal beauty leading to a fingerpicked, plaintive guitar accompaniment that slides into Halvorson’s inimitable moments of gentle effects. The chordal movement and melody are breathtaking and in a minor key, taking turns that should delight your ears. “Watersmoke” (Halvorson) finds guitar and trumpet playing unison sections amidst some fingerpicking. Still, she embarks on an impressionistic improvisation in the middle, accompanying herself with overdubbed guitar effects before the theme returns.

The trumpeter’s “Offo” is in a similar bag: an emotive ballad tempo with minimal guitar lines underpinning sumptuous horn playing in the middle register. Here, however, Akinmusire acts as the accompanist for a while, each musician finding ways to use the delay pedal to create a night sky full of color.

Does Hoverings sound too much the same from track to track? With just two players (despite the overdubbing and chorusing made possible by technology) and a dedication to its watercolor palette of sounds, it does not jump out at your ears with the same sharpness or angular insistence as the artists’ recent work with their own bands. This may be good or bad news, depending on your taste.

The variations are, however, interesting and compelling. “This Vivid” by Halvorson begins with rhythmic interplay between overdubbed guitar chimes, rippling runs, vocal outbursts, looped cries, trumpet licks, and sonic distortions. It is the album’s second track and serves as notice that it will not be pure balladry. The performance’s second phase is the most harmonically lush moment on the album, however, with the players in a delicious round. The contrast is the artistry of it.

“Soundcheck” (the co-composed piece) and the title track by Akinmusire both build orchestral layers of sound that seem like the shimmering waves of heat you see on a summer day, and each allows for improvisation to up the ante. Halvorson’s “Blood & Sand” offers another mid-tempo melody with arpeggios, but a middle section uses her guitar for some actual strumming that borrows a bit from indie rock.

“Nice to meet you again for the first time” comes closest to something that feels truly different, however. Maybe that’s because Akinmusire and Halvorson share some near-unison melody sections and play cat-and-mouse, chasing each other across the sonic space. The two modes feel inevitable and vital to each other, connected by the written melodic content and not mere contrasts. It is here that Hoverings sounds most traditional and most daring. On the one hand, “Nice to meet you again for the first time” evokes the memory of duet partners past such as Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, who turned “Weather Bird” into one of the first true jazz two-handers in 1928. Now, almost a century later, these two (post)modern players use a similar format to intimately suggest one refraction of the tradition.

When they play the composed melody together, Halvorson and Akinmusire can sound precise, like Armstrong and Hines, or raggedly loose, like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. When improvising, they can sound scampish and fun, or they can create a landscape of dissonance—a charcoal line scribbled over a liquid river. They tend to return to being Brooklyn impressionists on most tracks, eventually.

It is easy to imagine his duet having many different formulations because both Mary Halvorson and Ambrose Akinmusire conjure so many colors and textures. The range represented on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings isn’t narrow. Still, it centers most of its minutes in a gentler ballad space that allows for dissonance, yes, but defaults to gestures that lean toward simplicity and beauty. After a half dozen listens, it feels more like an hour of tapas than a tasting menu, which makes it charming and crystalline and still leaves room for something more.