Tag: Herlin Riley

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It's an old saw by this point to suggest that while the livelihood of the average working musician has never been more perilous, the curious listener has at the same time never before had access to such an abundance of quality music, from nagging earworms to the experimental margins and everything in between. In a year that saw bubbling...

For his debut on Nonesuch Records, the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire rails against the onslaught of the information age, bidding in his own words to 'create something that’s oriented around open space'. To that end he has enlisted the guitarist Bill Frisell, whose records Akinmusire treasured in his youth, and the drummer Herlin Riley who is cherished by the bandleader...

From the first Ayleresque thrum and steeped ritual of 'Miserere' to the wailing blues, doleful horns and overlayed piano on 'Wonderful Words Of Life' whose wispy middle section soon scrambles to a rapt climax, and from the percussive roils which shake up 'Inhaling and Exhaling' to accompany a reading from a book called Solo Gig by the avant-garde guitarist...