We can put aside the question of Ambrose Akinmusire’s skill, as well as any doubts about the tight, tasteful playing of his sidemen: saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Sam Harris, bassist Harish Raghavan, and drummer Justin Brown. All are top notch, have played together for years, and have the hallmarks of a highly developed group intuition. I’d have been perfectly satisfied if Ambrose and company had just released a stop-gap collection of standards and solos. Instead of resting on his considerable laurels, though, Akinsmusire is pushing himself (and the group) to try new things and to experiment on The Imagined Savior Is Far Easier to Paint (Blue Note Records). He wrote 12 of these 13 tracks and even produced the album himself.

Akinmusire’s playing is always a joy to hear. His tone invariably brings to mind the human voice—singing, scatting, chatting, gossiping, crowing, exclaiming, reciting poetry. There are several impeccable compositions that mix post-bop form with added dissonance (“As We Fight”) or add guitarist Charles Altura to the line-up (“Vartha”) or simply play it straight-ahead (“Bubbles” and “Richard”). All are traditional and spirited workouts for the group. Elsewhere he adds the OSSO string quartet and takes the music further afield from what you’d usually find on Blue Note. These instrumentals (including “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits” and “Inflatedbyspring”) each have their own concrete narrative arc, like pieces of a film score, dramatizing some story in Akinmusire’s mind’s eye.

There are also four tracks that feature vocals, but these are a decidedly mixed bag. Those voices reflect the singers themselves, as well as a group of characters—some fictional, some real—that Akinmusire was contemplating when he wrote the melodies. “Our Basement,” with words and vocals by Becca Stevens, has a lot of passion, but the composition is pretty static. Similarly, “Asiam” feels like a lugubrious recitative. The delivery is forceful, but I didn’t feel moved. However, the third vocal cut, “Ceaseless Inexhaustible Child (Cyntoia Brown)” is the most affecting song on the album. It’s a lamentation, a loping funeral march, perhaps an attempt at healing. (A quick internet search will tell you about the story behind the song.) Singer Al Spx of Cold Specks creaks out, “I always come crawling back,” and the cymbals stumble into a trumpet solo full of growls and out-of-tune glissandos. At the very end, the instruments all drop out and Al Spx addresses her subject directly, “Ceaseless, inexhaustible child. You were done and dusted.” The rest of Akinmusire’s new album doesn’t live up to its promise, but this song and its whispered ending are an undeniably powerful moment.