Gig review: Kamasi Washington, Emma-Jean Thackray at Project House, Leeds

As Kamasi Washington introduces Asha The First during the early stages of tonight’s strong and enthusiastically received two hour set at the sold-out Project House with a sweet story about how the song’s theme was built on the very first melody his four year old daughter plucked out of a piano, it becomes evident that as far as Washington is concerned, music is a family thing.

As well as tunes built around the yield of Washington’s young daughter’s early morning piano explorations, the 44-year old saxophonist and composer’s father Ricky Washington (on soprano saxophone and flute) is part of tonight’s band. Many of the other musicians on stage have been Washington’s musical family since 2015’s appropriate titled triple album Epic made the Los Angeles-based musician one of the preeminent figures of the ongoing 21st jazz resurgence.

There is a family connection to Emma-Jean Thackray’s all-too-brief support set, too. Although based in London, Thackray is originally from Leeds (and is sporting a Leeds United top to mark this hometown gig), and various family members are in attendance.

Keeping with the one-woman band approach of the entirely self-performed, revelatory upcoming second album (released on April 25) the 30-minute set is drawn from, Thackray upends the usual full band live set-up by performing selections from Weirdo entirely solo, singing and playing guitar, keyboards and trumpet on top of pre-recorded rhythm tracks.

It’s a daring and compelling performance, with samples from Fast Show’s classic ‘Jazz Show’ sketches countering the emotional heaviness of the new material’s themes of loss, grief and deteriorating mental health.

Next to Thackray’s solitary set-up, Washington’s eight-piece band feels almost as lavishly expansive as the sumptuous orchestrations that dominated Epic and 2018’s Heaven and Earth.

Last year’s Fearless Movement (which dominates the setlist) was marked by open-eared experimentation and general pushing at the boundaries of what constitutes ‘jazz’ in the 2020s. The ethos of genre-hopping eclecticism applies tonight as well, occasionally with mixed results.

Whilst the spiritual soul balladry of Lines In The Sand positively soars, the similarly pitched Together (jokingly pitched by Washington as the new album obligatory love song) remains earthbound. With extensive collaborator credits including Kendrick Lamar’s jazz-fueled 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly, there is no doubting Washington’s hip hop credentials, but a live remix of the new album’s George Clinton-starring P/G-funk homage Get Lit by turntablist/percussionist DJ Battlecat (with Washington grooving across the stage in one of his trademark robes) can’t help but seem like superfluous idling when soaring compositions such as Truth remain unheard.

The highpoints far outweigh any (relatively speaking) missteps, however. With the combined running time of the first two songs stretching to well over 30 minutes, Washington remains thoroughly committed to the extended, improvised displays of individual musical chops that jazz tradition is built on.

Each musician gets plenty of room to shine at length during tonight’s performance, but there are only rarely any signs of self-indulgent showing-off: the musical interplays mainly excel as exchanges of ideas and motifs in service of what the song is trying to get across, and the band’s joy in their intuitive musical chemistry is palpable.

Washington himself is on inspired form, unleashing fiery solos that elevate the closing Prologue (a definite highlight) into ever greater heights of vibrant intensity, only drawing to a close when Washington’s hypnotic riffing renders him visibly out of breath.