Yakiv Tsvietinskyi remembers having a friend hand him headphones in 2011 so he could hear fellow trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s solo “Confessions to My Unborn Daughter.” Akinmusire, who went on to receive three Grammy nominations and be featured on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, instantly inspired the burgeoning jazz artist from Ukraine.
“The most modern trumpet playing I heard by that time was probably Woody Shaw or something,” Tsvietinskyi said. “This was something completely new to me, and I started just researching who Ambrose is, and that’s how I learned about the institute.”
More than a decade later, the two trumpeters reconnected at the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA, where Akinmusire was named artistic director in 2023.
Even as he travels around the world to perform and collaborate, including a four-program residency that begins June 5 at Spoleto Festival USA in a variety of ensembles and a solo, the 43-year-old Akinmusire has become a fundamental part of Tsvietinskyi’s and many other students’ formation as jazz artists.
By the time Tsvietinskyi arrived at the institute in 2023, he and Akinmusire had crossed paths several times, including a friendly meet-up after a Kyiv concert (where Tsvietinskyi said he asked too many questions) and lessons in Switzerland as part of an ensemble residence program.
Tsvietinskyi was not the only one to build a relationship with Akinmusire, himself a former student at the institute, which was then called the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
A teacher grounded in excellence and empathy
Alden Hellmuth, an alto saxophone player who graduated in 2025 along with Tsvietinskyi, said she first came to the Herbie Hancock Institute with the hopes of eventually teaching jazz. She said Akinmusire’s ability as an artist and his insights have been supremely valuable.
“He has an unmatched level of focus and care for the music,” Hellmuth said. “And that authenticity comes through in everything he does.”
In an article that Akinmusire wrote for Chamber Music America in 2023, he said taking on the directorship at the institute made him reflect on what the concept of excellence meant to him.
“Excellence is defining your own terms of success and living by those while simultaneously allowing them to grow and change,” he wrote. “I would love to challenge each musician to define their terms of success, beyond having an amazing recording contract and beyond playing with whoever it is they want to play with.”
Wall Street Journal jazz reporter Larry Blumenfeld, who also serves as the Spoleto festival’s jazz curator, said artists within the genre relate to one another on various levels that sometimes have very little to do with music. Akinmusire’s depth of knowledge and connection to the present and past of jazz, he said, allows him to fully relate to others humanistically.
“Ambrose has connected to the elders that he learned from, on a very deep human and personal level,” Blumenfeld said. “That’s the way that he approaches teaching as well.”
Helping students find themselves in the music
Tsvietinskyi said Akinmusire’s lessons transcended jazz, treating it as a musical genre but also as a form of cultural identity.
He said he would constantly question his own identity as a jazz musician because jazz, as he said, “is an American art form.” With the genre being so deeply rooted in Black American history and American history in general, Tsvietinskyi said it was hard not to feel like he was just imitating. But Akinmusire helped Tsvietinskyi understand his own relation to jazz.
“He was the person who said, ‘It’s not like your life is easy,’” Tsvietinskyi said. “‘It doesn’t mean that you have to go through the exact same experiences to relate to that music. So you got to learn to see yourself in that whole culture.’”
Tsvietinskyi added Akinmusire gave meaning back to music for him even in the face of conflict. Tsvietinskyi is from Dnipro, a city that is right on the frontlines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Once the war started, Tsvietinskyi said he wanted to quit music, a feeling that persisted at the Herbie Hancock Institute. But Akinmusire was vital in helping Tsvietinskyi find the meaning of the music again and why he’s still playing. Tsvietinskyi said Akinmusire often challenged students to reflect on what music really meant to them.
In the midst of shared pain — such as Akinmusire losing his mother and Tsvietinskyi being away from his home during wartime — Akinmusire’s mentorship helped Tsvietinskyi cope with everything happening in the world. It strengthened a bond between the two men that started when Tsvietinskyi put on that pair of headphones almost 15 years ago.
“He is a very special, special person in my life, and I am where I am because of him, and I play what I play because of him,” Tsvietinskyi said. “I cannot even see what my life would look like if I had not met him.”
IF YOU WANT TO GO: “Ambrose Akinmusire” performs 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. June 5, Dock Street Theatre; 9 p.m. June 6, College of Charleston Sottile Theatre; 5 p.m. June 7, Circular Congregational Church. Tickets are $38-$68.
Henry O’Brien is an arts journalism and communications graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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