Kamasi Washington
Webster Hall
New York
February 24

On a rainy winter night in New York, Kamasi Washington limped to center stage in a walking boot, leaning on an ornate cane. His saxophone in tow, Washington overlooked the sold-out crowd inside a hot, hazy Webster Hall, and his seven-piece band kicked into “Change of the Guard.” Much can be said about “Change of the Guard,” the opening track on Washington’s odyssey-length LP, aptly titled The Epic. The song is a 12-minute journey of lush garden grooves that sound like they could spill over the tops of the Himalayas—it’s an ideal show-opener. But thematically, “Change of the Guard” does well to sum up Washington’s position in the modern jazz world.

The 35-year-old bandleader openly refutes the word “jazz” in reference to his music, and it’s easy to understand why. Jazz, as a genre, covers a broad range of styles. Washington and his band, collectively known as the West Coast Get Down, explored every corner of the jazz spectrum over their seven-song Webster Hall set—from swinging drums underneath walking basslines with boisterous horn solos to the groovier, more melodic fusion of groups like Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra. As much as he might want to distance himself from it, Washington has a place on jazz’s chaotic timeline. Few, if any, players have reinforced jazz music’s cultural relevance in the 21st century the way he has. He may have truly made his mark in early 2015 with his work on Kendrick Lamar’s masterful To Pimp a Butterfly, but Washington truly blossoms during his headlining engagements, as remarkably diverse crowds experience his music firsthand.

Although the studio tracks on The Epic have grandiose orchestral and choral arrangements, very little of that spiritual aura was lost when the songs were stripped down for this septet formation. The band also invited Kamasi’s father, Rickey Washington, out to play flute on “Henrietta Our Hero,” a gorgeous gospel number, which showcased vocalist Patrice Quinn’s range. The elder Washington remained onstage for the remainder of the show. From the look in his eyes as he watched his son pour his soul into each tenor sax solo, you could see that, at least in the Washington family, there was another changing of the guard taking place.

Two of the night’s funkiest tunes were written by other West Coast Get Down members. Miles Mosley played his upright bass through a bubbly envelope filter and sang lead vocals on his unrelentingly groovy composition “Abraham.” Keyboardist and prolific keytar player Brandon Coleman later led the band through his own “Giant Feelings,” which contained a full-band tease of the Ghostbusters theme.

An entire review could be devoted solely to the band’s two drummers,Ronald Bruner Jr. and Tony Austin, who challenge conception as to how rhythmically aligned two human beings can be on separate drum sets. During their drum solo— or “conversation,” as Kamasi called it—the two drummers perfectly increased and decreased tempo as if they were a machine and someone was turning a dial.

All of this word-class musicianship came to a head on the rollicking ballad “The Rhythm Changes.” Wherever Kamasi Washington belongs in the annals of jazz music, consider this song, and this concert’s final verse, belted by Quinn over massive
crescendos: “Our love, our beauty, our genius/ Our work, our triumph, our glory/ Won’t worry what happened before me/I’m here.”