Kamasi will move Heaven and Earth
Fans at sold out Olympia show will be blown away by brilliance of the jazz master Washington
My music is an extension of who I am, so I’m constantly searching within myself for my identity and beliefs.
Jazz genius Kamasi Washington returns to Dublin this weekend for a sold out show following his appearance at The Beatyard festival last summer.
The tenor saxophonist, who released his latest album Heaven and Earth last summer to worldwide acclaim last year, plays Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on Sunday March 3.
When Washington released his tour de force LP, The Epic, in 2015, it instantly set him on a path as our generation’s torchbearer for progressive, improvisational music that would open the door for young audiences to experience music unlike anything they had heard before.
The 172-minute odyssey featuring his 10-piece band, The Next Step, was littered with elements of hiphop, classical and R&B music, all major influences on the young saxophonist and bandleader, who exceeds any notions of what jazz music is.
Released to critical acclaim, The Epic won numerous ‘best of ’ awards, including the inaugural American Music
Prize and the Gilles
Peterson Worldwide album of the year.
Washington followed that work with collaborations with other influential artists such as Kendrick Lamar,
(inset) John Legend,
Run the Jewels, Ibeyi and the creation of
2017’s Harmony of Difference, a standalone multimedia installation during the prestigious
2017
Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in
New York City.
It was succeeded by last year’s Heaven and Earth, a two-part album that was supported with extended play followup The Choice.
“My music is an extension of who I am, so I’m constantly searching within myself for my identity and beliefs,” the 38-year-old Los Angeles native told Dazed last year.
“Once you get past all the scales, the chords and technique, all you really have is your thoughts, and that will determine what your music really is.”
“Earth are the songs that came from my own experiences of life, and Heaven are the songs of how I imagine life,” Washington said about the dual-perspective album.
“The journey, you realise, is one and the same: how you imagine the world affects how you experience it.”
One of the reasons Washington has resonated so loudly outside jazz is due to his fine work on rapper Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-inflected 2015 hip-hop album, To Pimp a Butterfly, he also contributed to 2017’s Pulitzer-winning Damn.
His mass appeal continues to grow drawing vibrant, multi-ethnic and multigenerational crowds with tour stops at the world’s most prominent festivals.
If his performance at last year’s Beatyard in
Dun Laoighaire and appearances at Coachella, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Bonnaroo and Primavera are anything to go by, fans attending Sunday night’s show are in for a real treat.