Bill Frisell & Ambrose Akinmusire in New York

Bill Frisell is an American guitarist and composer, born in Baltimore in 1951 and raised in Denver. He plays jazz shaped by folk, country, rock and experimental music, and his best-known albums include Have a Little Faith, Nashville and Gone, Just Like a Train. The live double album East/West documents two trio engagements, one at the Village Vanguard in New York and one at Yoshi’s in Oakland. He returned to the first club for a duo engagement in 2016; recordings from those performances with bassist Thomas Morgan were released as Small Town and Epistrophy.

Ambrose Akinmusire is an American jazz trumpeter and composer, born in Oakland in 1982. He won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Trumpet Competition in 2007 and is known for albums including When the Heart Emerges Glistening, The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint, Origami Harvest and On the Tender Spot of Every Calloused Moment. In 2015, Akinmusire served as artist-in-residence at the Monterey Jazz Festival and presented the commissioned work The Forgotten Places. A 2017 quartet engagement featuring pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown was documented on A Rift in Decorum: Live at the Village Vanguard, preserving two sets recorded at the Village Vanguard.