Hip-hopping to new jazz sound.
Credited as the greatest jazz influence since the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, Kamasi Washington is packing out venues wherever he goes with his eclectic musical offering.
The 36-year-old saxophonist and composer from California is attracting new fans to jazz through a breadth of styles that range from spiritual jazz, soul and gospel to funk, fusion and hip-hop. So potent is the music that audiences have even been dancing in the aisles, moved by what Washington refers to as its “openness” and “lack of boundaries”.
Indeed he and his band New Step are a jukebox-full of different genres playing with a familiarity that he says “comes from growing up together doing what we wanted to do with no restrictions”.
He believes it was his love of music that saved him from the gang culture of South Central Los Angeles and helped him drive a more popular jazz style that was brewing in the city. “Our soulful musical mix is partly because we grew up playing in church and also because we were allowed to be more intuitive rather than deliberate in our approach,” he says.
Washington also learned from touring with the likes of Lauryn Hill, Chaka Khan, Snoop Dogg and the experimental electronic musician Flying Lotus, along with jazz heavyweights Herbie Hancock and George Duke, and playing on Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-rap album To Pimp a Butterfly.
His own acclaimed debut album The Epic released last year on the trend-setting Brainfeeder label in the US and the hip but non-jazzy Ninja Tune in the UK introduced him to rock and pop music buyers.
The three-disc album resulted from a month of marathon recording sessions with his band that produced 190 tunes, 40 of which are Washington’s own compositions. Tracks range from impassioned wildly virtuosic solos to celestial versions of classics such as Debussy’s Clair de Lune with choir and strings. The album’s acclaim has led to worldwide tours and even a booking to perform tracks from The Epic with the CBSO Strings and a choral backing at a Late Night BBC Prom in August.
But Birmingham jazz fans can hip-hop to Washington much sooner when he and an eight-piece version of the New Step including a vocalist, keyboardist, trombonist and upright bass player as well as two drummers play the O2 Institute Birmingham 2 on Wednesday, June 29 as part of a UK tour. For tickets, click on www.academymusicgroup.com/o2institutebirmingham