Datebook: Ambrose Akinmusire returns to Monterey, where live jazz changed his life

Ambrose Akinmusire had a life-altering epiphany at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1996. The 37-year-old composer and trumpet virtuoso was just a teenager then, a precocious prodigy leaning into the idea of playing jazz but wondering just what that would look like. Born and raised in Oakland, Akinmusire was part of a high school all-star band gathered in 1996 for an afternoon master class by trumpeter Roy Hargrove, who died last year at age 49.

Tension grew as Akinmusire sat in the front row with the other young musicians that day waiting for Hargrove, who was late. Suddenly, the slight, ultra-stylish Hargrove appeared on stage in leather pants and a white tank top undershirt.

“He walked up and he didn’t say anything. He just started playing, and then the band came in. … This one performance changed a lot of people’s lives,” Akinmusire said from his East Bay home during a practice break. “I’m getting goosebumps just from telling you this.”

To finish the set, Hargrove played three straight ballads.

“He walked up to the mike and said ‘Any questions?’ There was just silence, and he walked off the stage,” Akinmusire recalled. “That was the moment where I said, ‘OK, this is for me. I’m gonna do this.’ ”

Now 23 years later, Akinmusire is gearing up to return to the Monterey Jazz Festival, scheduled to hit the Garden Stage on Sunday, Sept. 29, to help close out the event’s 62nd year. While he doesn’t have the sartorial flamboyance of Hargrove, who remained a sage example throughout his life, Akinmusire’s music confidently struts its ambitions and strengths — and it’ll all be on display this weekend as he performs his latest album “Origami Harvest” in its entirety.

Akinmusire’s four studio albums as a leader for Blue Note Records document his artistic development, but his latest work, released in October, makes an evolutionary leap. The provocative album immersed in the current cultural political dynamics features the Mivos String Quartet, freestyle rapper Kool A.D. on vocals (he also wrote the words to the songs), longtime musical associate Sam Harris on piano and saxophonist Walter Smith III, all pushed and driven by the extraordinary drumming of Marcus Gilmore. For the Monterey set, Kokayi plans to handle the vocals and longtime collaborator Justin Brown is expected to play the drums.

Composed of six tracks, “Origami Harvest” feels like one organic piece with the enveloping strings, urgent rapped vocals and sharp contemplative trumpet merging into an unsettling but deeply moving whole. It’s the first album Akinmusire has made since moving back home to Oakland from New York. The music and words form an incisive narrative about being a young man of color in this era, in this particular place.

“There’s something about driving past the Fruitvale BART Station and seeing the Oscar Grant memorials,” Akinmusire said, referring to the 22-year-old Oakland resident who was fatally shot in 2009 by a BART police officer.

Akinmusire’s depth of feeling around Grant’s death has been persistent. He recorded an elegy for Grant, “My Name Is Oscar,” on his 2011 album “The Heart Emerges Glistening.” And it wasn’t a one-off. On his next album, 2014’s “The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint,” Akinmusire included “Roll Call for Those Absent,” a disquieting synthesizer drone with a young girl reciting the names of young African Americans who have lost their lives to police and security figures.

He reprises the theme on “Origami Harvest” with “Free, White, and 21” as the string quartet plays a bouncy upbeat theme that ironically underscores Akinmusire himself whispering the tragic list of victims. It all goes over his dubbed background wails, with him finally intoning, “We are not a protest song,” and whistling as the song drifts away. At a little over three minutes, it’s the shortest piece on the record, but its impact binds the longer pieces together.

“I was thinking a lot about opposites,” Akinmusire said about writing the album. “In terms of politics, Democrats and Republicans, then black and white, male and female — all the isms — wondering how I can represent these things sonically. Maybe we can arrive at some point where these things aren’t that different.”

The music of “Origami Harvest” has evolved as Akinmusire performed it throughout Europe this summer. Drummer Brown, who hails from Richmond and was in the front row for Hargrove with Akinmusire all those years ago, and vocalist Kokayi give the pointed songs new edges not present in the original recording.

“It’s just interesting hearing young African American males responding to the music and interpreting the music, since this project has a lot to do with that,” Akinmusire said.

“This isn’t something separate from me; this is my culture.”