Washington impresses with orchestral hip -hop jazz and spiritual solos

Prior to a short time trial, cyclists sometimes cycle in sweat on home trainers, to be able to shoot almost sprinting with high heartbeat. Did saxophonist Kamasi Washington do something similar in the dressing room of Paradiso on Sunday evening? Because how differently can be explained that, cold on stage, he can immediately squeeze a phenomenal solo of more than six minutes out of his lungs. He skims along major themes. Love, loss, joy, euphoria; It’s all in it. The last notes come from his toes, the sax gives birth to a tettering elephant, but it is possible, it fits, it is right.

While his band passes on, Washington puffs out and smiling the sweat from his forehead. He likes muscle jazz and thus reaches a much wider audience than the average jazz musician. With, among other things, the legendary DJ Battleecat in the ranks, the eight -member band lays on the left between hip hop, soul, funk and jazz, where wide -spun free solos are eagerly greeted in a sold -out Paradiso. The man from Los Angeles is wearing a black robe with golden stitching that shines with the amulet around his neck and the sax in front of his chest.

Under the overwhelming Spiritual Jazz lies the thick message of love and attention he worked out His album Fearless Movement From 2024, most of which come from the evening. Moving and typical is his approach on ‘Asha the First’, which he based on his daughter’s first piano melody. On this first Easter Monday he plays the four notes, after which his DJ and his drummer lay down a grand beat that is underlined by three blazers and singer Patrice Quinn. This creates an orchestral jazz work on which his father, soprano saxophonist Rickey Washington, also soles and therefore three generations sound on stage.

A pitfall of the generous Washington is that he gives a lot of room to solos from his band members and they are usually not as exciting as his own musical exploration. For example, the energy runs a bit halfway, partly because singer Quinn does not seem to have the best throat. An exception is keyboardist Brandon Coleman who starts working with the voting converter and funky keywork.

The impressive solo with which Washington opened the evening, he plays on ‘Lesanu’, a song on which he says he honors ‘the existence of music’. « Because of music it sometimes seems like I have friends of a hundred years old, » he explains. For example, more intergenerational lines run throughout the evening. The Funky Hiphop jazz of ‘Get Lit’, written with fun -legend George Clinton, is mixed by DJ Battleecat with Nineties Rap from Camp Lo.

As one of the last songs, the band ‘Prologue’ plays, an adaptation of a composition by the Argentinian bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla. Again, singing and blazers merge into a euphoric interplay about a solid beat. Finally there is room again for Washington itself to go on an adventure. On a stream of nuts he takes the listener around the world and through music history. After more than two hours and eight songs, Washington still breathes over, as if ‘Prologue’ is only the first stage.

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