Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings Ambrose Akinmusire & Mary Halvorson

• 1 Prelude in the Ash 06:04
• 2 This Vivid 04:47
• 3 Nice to meet you again for the first time 05:49
• 4 Soundcheck 03:32
• 5 Watersmoke 03:18
• 6 Tangled Pretty 04:25
• 7 Ofo 04:13
• 8 Blood & Sand 06:18
• 9 Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings 07:47
• Total Runtime 46:13

Info for Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings

Trumpeter/composer Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson's album Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is due June 12, 2026, on Nonesuch Records. The album features four new compositions by each musician as well as one collaboration. The album track “Soundcheck“ is available today and can be heard below; you can pre-order the album here. The duo, long admirers of each other’s musicianship, met at Halvorson’s Brooklyn apartment and began playing together periodically, going back as far as 2009. They rehearsed the music on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings in January 2025, just before performing it at the New York City club The Stone; they recorded this album the next day at Sear Sound.

The duo made two previous attempts at recording an album but felt that they got it right with this third session. Halvorson says of their rapport, which developed over those years of friendship and collaboration, “I think it’s partly a shared aesthetic and an ease of communication. I feel comfortable to try whatever.” Akinmusire concurs, “I think it’s rare to find an improviser that all goes and nothing has to go at all. It’s rare to feel like you don’t have to do anything and you can do anything. And that’s what I love about playing with Mary.”

Though Halvorson regularly uses effects pedals on her guitar, Akinmusire’s use of one on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is new. Having recently gotten an updated model of the Line 6, Halvorson was passing her old ones along to friends. “Ambrose was interested in trying a Line Six. I gave him one five minutes before the rehearsal and was amazed how quickly he was able to do incredible shit on it ... in literally five minutes,” she says.

Ambrose Akinmusire, trumpet
Mary Halvorson, guitar

Ambrose Akinmusire
During his 15-year career, Ambrose Akinmusire has paradoxically situated himself in both the center and the periphery of jazz, most recently emerging in classical and hip hop circles. He’s on a perpetual quest for new paradigms, masterfully weaving inspiration from other genres, arts, and life in general into compositions that are as poetic and graceful as they are bold and unflinching. His unorthodox approach to sound and composition make him a regular on critics polls and have earned him earned him grants and commissions from the Doris Duke Foundation, the MAP Fund, the Kennedy Center

The Berlin Jazz Festival and the Monterey Jazz. While Akinmusire continues to garner accolades, his reach is always beyond—himself, his instrument, genre, form, preconceived notions, and anything else imposing limitations.

Motivated primarily by the spiritual and practical value of art, Akinmusire wants to remove the wall of erudition surrounding his music. He aspires to create richly textured emotional landscapes that tell the stories of the community, record the time, and change the standard. While committed to continuing the lineage of black invention and innovation, he manages to honor tradition without being stifled by it.

Akinmusire is a rigorous practitioner with an uncompromising dedication to creation. “I’ve learned to accept the consequences of believing in invention and creativity. You’re gonna be misunderstood. But my horse blinders have gotten a lot longer and lot thicker over the years.”

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Ambrose Akinmusire (pronounced ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) was a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble when he caught the attention of saxophonist Steve Coleman. Akinmusire was asked to join Coleman’s Five Elements, embarking on a European tour when he was just a 19-year-old student at the Manhattan School of Music. After returning to the West Coast to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Southern California, Akinmusire went on to attend the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in Los Angeles, where he studied with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Terence Blanchard.

In 2007 Akinmusire won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, decided by a panel of judges that included Blanchard, Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert, Hugh Masekela, Clark Terry and Roy Hargrove. That year Akinmusire also won the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition and released his debut album Prelude…To Cora on the Fresh Sound label. He moved back to New York and began performing with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding and Jason Moran. It was also during this time that he first caught the attention of another discerning listener, Bruce Lundvall, President of Blue Note Records.

Akinmusire’s Blue Note debut When The Heart Emerges Glistening was released in 2011 to rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times praised his “chameleonic tone that can sigh, flutter or soar,” adding that “Akinmusire sounds less like a rising star than one that was already at great heights and just waiting to be discovered.” DownBeat described his playing as “spectacular and not at all shy — muscular, driving, with a forward sound, pliant phrasing and a penchant for intervallic leaps,” concluding that “clearly something very special and personal is at work here, a vision of jazz that’s bigger than camps, broader and more intellectually restless than blowing sessions.”

Mary Halvorson
is a Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer and recording artist for Nonesuch Records. Her distinctive sound and innovative approach to her instrument have earned her widespread recognition over the past two decades, including numerous best-of-the-year lists, a 2019 MacArthur Foundation fellowship and Guitarist of the Year honors in the DownBeat Critics Poll for the past nine years. When not leading her own award-winning bands, she can be heard in a wide variety of creative partnerships and on more than 75 releases as a co-leader or sidewoman.

Her most recent recording, About Ghosts, was selected as the best new jazz album of 2025 by NPR Music, Slate and the voters in both the 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll and the 18th International Critics Poll, which also named her Composer and Guitarist of the Year. "Mary Halvorson refuses to be defined, let alone confined," wrote A.D. Amarosi in his review for DownBeat. "If Halvorson is the future of jazz," added Chris Ingalls in PopMatters, "we are in tremendously gifted hands."

​ This year she'll be focusing on her newest group, Canis Major, featuring Dave Adewumi (trumpet), Henry Fraser (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). After playing a handful of select dates around New York over the past several months, the quartet will be touring for the first time across the U.S. and in Europe beginning in the Spring. "Canis Major feels like the start of something very special," she explains. "The music has been growing exponentially each time we play. It's been many years since I've led a smaller band, and I've really been enjoying the depth, interplay and intensity that this configuration brings to my music." ​​

This album contains no booklet.