Jazz Fest review: Kamasi Washington brought fans on a cosmic journey at a packed MTelus

Kamasi Washington
June 30 
MTelus

Kamasi Washington is bringing jazz to the youth. While his Montreal Jazz Fest show featured its share of the silver-haired attendees that make up the bulk of most Jazz Fest crowds, a good portion of the packed MTelus venue was in their 20’s, making Washington likely the only jazz saxophonist with a strong following among Millennials. Much of that crowd no doubt came to Washington through his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on 2015’s dense To Pimp a Butterfly LP, but the fact that they’ve stayed on through Washington’s heady jazz explorations shows what a strong connection he’s made with fans in just a few short years.

Taking the stage in Montreal just days after the release of his new double album Heaven and Earth, Washington led his 6-piece band into the bombastic opener “Street Fighter Mas,” which he said was based on the fact that he is the “best Street Fighter player in the world.”

Throughout the night, Washington acted as a band leader in the truest sense, often ceding the spotlight for a number of solos from his band, including what can only be described as a heavy metal interlude by Miles Mosley on the double bass. The entire set was constructed around a handful of songs that often stretched out towards the 20-minute mark, mostly set around the recently released Heaven and Hell.

With Washington’s fiery sax playing front and center, he led the band through a set of genre-pushing jazz that incorporated elements of funk and psychedelic soul. If the looser (perhaps improvisational) moments of the show sometimes dragged, the joy of seeing Washington live is when all of the band’s seemingly disparate elements suddenly come together in a burst, bringing the entire suite back down to its central melodic thrust. It’s a thrilling thing to witness, and made the quieter moments of the set all the more impactful.

Jazz runs through Washington’s family, a notion he celebrated when he brought out his father Rickey Washington on soprano sax for the upbeat ‘”The Rhythm Changes,” off 2015’s acclaimed triple-LP The Epic. Featuring backing vocalist Patrice Quinn’s powerhouse vocals, it was easily one of the highlights of the set.

While Washington’s soaring music often seems to be gazing towards the stars, he was sure to inject some real world politics into the night.

“Diversity is not something to be tolerated but to be celebrated,” he announced to huge cheers from the crowd before kicking into “Truth,” the moving closing track off last year’s Harmony of Difference EP.

Sailing past his scheduled 75-minute set time by a solid half hour, Washington ended the set on a triumphant note with the 70’s blaxploitation funk of “Fists of Fury,” which brought vocalist Quinn’s powerful voice to the forefront for the fiery protest anthem. It was a searing, down-to-earth finale for a show of cosmic proportions.