The Epic Kamasi Washington

Album review

Like its creator, Kamasi Washington's triple album debut, The Epic, is imposing, multi-faceted and aspiring to change music forever. A close collaborator with fellow innovative Angelenos Stephen Bruner (Thundercat), Steven Ellison (Flying Lotus) and Kendrick Lamar, Washington's evolved vision mixes bebop, soul jazz, old school organ trio R&B, space jazz and fusion à la Miles Davis. At the center of this prismatic, conscious-expanding maelstrom is Washington's bodacious horn whose tone and approach can by turns be compared to the playing of Azar Lawrence, Pharoah Sanders and especially John Coltrane. The musical forces assembled to energize Washington's intuitive, spiritual meld are truly Herculean. Supported by Thundercat, keyboardists Cameron Graves and Brandon Coleman, trombones, trumpets and more, Washington, who also served as producer, worked a string section, a 20-voice choir and solo vocalist Patrice Quinn into his futuristic arrangements. Despite overdubbing by the project's six engineers, the sonic results are sleek and uncluttered.

The diverse flavors here vary with each tune. Introduced by Coleman's organ, "Final Thought" mixes funk and post-bop with Washington's nimble honking. The swing rhythms and wordless vocal choir of "The Next Step" show the results of his time with innovative big band leader Gerald Wilson. Unadulterated fun is the object of the 70's funk groove, "Re Run Home." For those who doubt his connection to music history there's the one-two punch of the standard "Cherokee" and his soaring re-imagining of a movement of Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune." While one can quibble that perhaps three discs is too much of a good thing, it's clear from the assured first notes of the aptly-titled opener "Change of the Guard" that Washington is a musical mystic who's fused his wisdoms and exposures into a debut that's not a product of the insular jazz bubble, nor an au courant hip hop-jazz mashup, but three hours that somehow sound old and new in the same moment—a virtuosic musical statement, one constantly verging on genius. © Robert Baird/Qobuz