Origami Harvest is a very ambitious project, where extreme things come together: the dissonances of a contemporary string quartet, the martial delivery of rapper Kool A.D., the brilliant jazz of trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and his friends, Marcus Gilmore, drums, and Sam Harris, piano. The California bandleader is a catalyst for these elements, together painting a portrait of an America that still treats Blacks as second-class citizens. As to the formal breakthroughs put forward by the composer and improviser, certainly one of the most significant of the decade, a message no less powerful is conveyed as a subtext.
