Kamasi Washington
Tenor Saxophone / Saxophone

Kamasi Washington

(1981–)

United States

Vast and spiritual. Washington's signature sound involves large ensembles — orchestra and choir — and he became widely known through his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar. Beneath all of it, the roots are firmly in jazz tradition. He made jazz feel urgent and necessary to listeners who had never found it before.

Kamasi Washington's leader album

The Epic
The Epic
Kamasi Washington · 2015

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) was built on jazz musicians: Robert GlasperRobert GlasperRobert Glasperロバート・グラスパー, Terrace MartinTerrace MartinTerrace Martinテラス・マーティン, Kamasi WashingtonKamasi WashingtonKamasi Washingtonカマシ・ワシントン, and ThundercatThundercatThundercatサンダーキャット. Glasper was supposed to play on one track, but Kendrick kept queuing up songs — he ended up recording nine in a single sitting with no sheet music. The piano solo on "These Walls" was actually his warmup, secretly recorded by Terrace Martin.

— Robert Glasper on Playing Jazz Piano on To Pimp a Butterfly, Slate, 2015

Kamasi Washington's albums

Kamasi WashingtonKamasi WashingtonKamasi Washingtonカマシ・ワシントン's The Epic arrived in 2015 as a defiantly oversized 172-minute triple album. In The FADER's profile he explained that the West Coast Get Down crew tracked enough material for eight albums in one Los Angeles session, and once he edited down his own share, this is simply how long it ran.

— Kamasi Washington's Epic Awakening, The FADER, 2015

What gives The Epic its sonic signature is Kamasi WashingtonKamasi WashingtonKamasi Washingtonカマシ・ワシントン's own arranging, layering strings and a choir on top of a double quartet. In The FADER's interview he described starting from the image of Dexter Gordon's tenor, glimpsed in a dream, sitting on top of Debussy harmony.

— Kamasi Washington's Epic Awakening, The FADER, 2015