Ground-breaking modern jazz visionary Kamasi Washington will return to the Sydney Opera House this October with his eight-piece band to premiere his transcendent sophomore album Heaven and Earth in Australia in-the-round of the Concert Hall, following his sold-out debut last year.
Wednesday 9 October 2019
CONCERT HALL, SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
Hailed by Pitchfork as “the strongest musical statement of his career”, Heaven and Earth is a sprawling, eclectic two-and-a-half-hour double album exploring Kamasi’s philosophical reckoning with current global chaos and his vision for the future through funk grooves, sweeping gospel choirs and dizzying sax solos. This album connects “politics with the jazz of the past to create an angrily inclusive new vision” assuring the tenor saxophonist “has found his time and it is now” (The Guardian).
A jazz conceptualist, bandleader and composer, Washington has already established a far-reaching legacy despite only entering the mainstream charts as recently as 2015. He has reinvigorated the West Coast jazz genre through his well-known orchestrated arrangements for Kendrick Lamar (‘Lust’ and ‘Mortal Man’), lent his melodies to Run the Jewels, Flying Lotus and most recently for Florence and the Machine’s ‘Big God’, and will be touring with living legend and Sydney Opera House alumnus Herbie Hancock ahead of his Concert Hall show.
An offer from independent record label and tastemaker Brainfeeder to release his debut album turned into the critically-acclaimed, classic three-hour, three-disc opus The Epic (2015). It was quickly followed by an EP titled Harmony of Difference, released through Washington’s current label Young Turks. The six-movement suite EP was exhibited as a multimedia piece featuring projected paintings by his sister Amai at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial in 2017.
Now returning to the Opera House for one night only, Washington will take audiences through the ethereal and captivating journey of Heaven and Earth and speak his spiritual truth through the undeniable power of jazz on the Concert Hall stage.