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

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