Kamasi Washington

Kamasi Washington

Kamasi Washington is a jazz saxophonist from Los Angeles, United States. Born in 1981, he is a founding member of the West Coast Get Down collective and works across jazz, jazz fusion, spiritual jazz, bebop and contemporary jazz.

Early life and musical background

Washington grows up in a musical family. His father, Rickey Washington, is a saxophonist and high school music teacher, and his mother, Valerie Washington, is a flutist who later teaches high school chemistry after working as a genetic researcher. He begins on drums and piano at the age of two, moves to clarinet around seven, and takes up tenor saxophone at twelve, using the same instrument his father plays in high school.

He transfers from the Los Angeles Center of Enriched Studies to the Hamilton High School Music Academy, where he becomes the lead tenor saxophonist and joins The Multi School Jazz Band under Reginald Andrews. Through that group he meets and performs around musicians including Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Horace Tapscott and Gerald Wilson. He wins first place in the John Coltrane Saxophone competition in his senior year of high school.

Education and early groups

After high school, Washington studies ethnomusicology at UCLA. During that period he forms the Young Jazz Giants with Cameron Graves and brothers Ronald Bruner Jr. and Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner. The group records a self-titled album, released in 2004, and Washington later records and performs with a wide range of musicians and bands.

He joins Gerald Wilson’s big band and is the only member of Wilson’s regular Los Angeles band invited to play on the album In My Time, recorded in New York. He also forms The Next Step as a new vehicle for his own compositions, and later performs with artists including Snoop Dogg, Raphael Saadiq, McCoy Tyner, George Duke and PJ Morton.

Recording career

Washington appears on a broad range of recordings in 2014, including albums by Broken Bells, Harvey Mason, Stanley Clarke and Flying Lotus. He also contributes to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. His debut as a leader is The Epic, released on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label. The album is a triple record running for nearly three hours and features members of Young Jazz Giants, who are by then part of his larger ten-piece collective, also known as The Next Step and West Coast Get Down, together with string orchestra and choir conducted by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.

The Epic reaches number three on the jazz charts and also appears on independent albums and heatseekers charts. Washington tours in the United States and also performs in Europe and Japan. He records on the Shoto Mas Inc. label.