“I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?” With this quote from the writer Joan Didion from her 1970 novel “Play Your Game”, the US trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire titled his first solo album “Beauty Is Enough”, which was released last year. He recorded the 16 pieces, some of which are just over a minute long, in 2022 in the 16th century parish church of Saint-Eustache in Paris – completely unaccompanied, with just the reverberation of the church and the atmosphere of the room. In his liner notes, he wrote that he sees the album, which is entirely improvised, as a kind of rite of passage: so many of his role models on the trumpet had made solo albums at crucial points in their careers, and he had found himself at such a turning point. The result is a calm, deeply felt work that demonstrates Akinmusire’s virtuosity without sounding contrived. The title “Self Portrait” is also very sensitive: unprotected, searching, giving himself completely to the music, playing his game.