The saxophonist and bandleader consecrated LACMA, scored Shinichirō Watanabe’s Lazarus and now stretches nightly in a 10-night residency at the new Blue Note Hollywood
Kamasi Washington is having a moment. This summer, the composer, bandleader, saxophonist and musical son of Los Angeles staged an unprecedented „sonic blessing“ at LACMA that attendees described less as a concert and more as a revelation. Over three evenings in late June, Washington transformed the museum’s new David Geffen Galleries—still empty of art—into a cathedral of sound. More than a hundred musicians in nine ensembles filled the 100,000-square-foot brutalist space with expanded arrangements from Washington’s 2018 EP Harmony of Difference. As sunset light poured through massive glass windows, visitors wandered while choruses morphed into ecstatic saxophone solos that dissolved into woodwind choirs. One critic called it „outright splendor.“ Another said the whole building felt alive.Kamasi Washington’s Los Angeles Takeover: LACMA to Blue Note
Washington’s higher-mind imagination also extended this year to Lazarus, Shinichirō Watanabe’s long-awaited anime return, where Washington joined Bonobo and Floating Points to score the Adult Swim series. For Washington, who once obsessed over Macross Plus as a teenager, the collaboration feels like cosmic justice, he’s said.
