Why the Herbie Hancock and Kamasi Washington tour matters
Herbie Hancock and Kamasi Washington are teaming up on tour this summer, and the two generations of jazz boundary-pushers will come to Philly on August 4th at the Met.
Hancock a legendary pianist who has been able to move his music with the times and change the standards of jazz with his style. Washington, a tenor sax player who merges classical arrangement with jazz, has emerged as a leader of the new guard.
These are two examples of what jazz is meant to be: that is a sonic spectrum, and a method of portraying feeling by any means.
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A bonafide jazz legend, Herbie Hancock has been in the music industry for over six decades and shows no signs of stopping. He got his first big break during a stint with Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter from 1964 to1968. He released his first solo album, Takin Off in 1962. Since then, Herbie Hancock released countless albums that stayed on the cutting edge of jazz music, and music in general, from the classic Head Hunters (1973) to the synthesizer-pioneering Future Shock (1983) and the Lennon tribute The Imagine Project (2010). Not only of the most impactful jazz musicians of all time, Hancock is olso one of the last O.G. musicians from the original Blue Note era to still tour and make music.
A tenor sax player from Southern California, Kamasi Washington has one of the highest ceilings in jazz. He is just coming off of his 2018 release Heaven and Earth, the third installment of his amazing catalog. Kamasi Washington first got his start in the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, and performed on the 2005 album In My Time in 2004. His band at the time was called Young Jazz Giants and consisted of Ronald Bruener, Cameron Graves, and Steven “Thundercat” Bruener. The group released one album in 2004, which was self titled. The band members ended up pursuing solo careers, however they still work and tour together and expanded the collective into The West Coast Get Down. In 2015, Washington released his solo debut album, The Epic; it was three hours long and amazing. He also worked with Kendrick Lamar on his album To Pimp A Butterfly. His sophomore release, 2017’s Harmony of Difference, was only half an hour but incredibly beautiful. More than just a jazz album, it was a work of art.
Kamasi Washington and others in his field have been able to revive jazz music and re-popularize it. Benefiting from the spotlight shone on him by Kendrick Lamar, Kamasi was able to help music lovers realize and remember how great and how important jazz is. Herbie Hancock has always been able to move along with the times and popularity of genres: he could do jazz, funk, and even hip-hop. (Apparently the next album he is working on will feature Kendrick Lamar). The pairing of these two artist for this concert could not be more perfect, and we will see you there. Tickets and more information on the show can be found at the XPN Concert Calendar.