Kamasi Washington
American saxophonist and bandleader
Kamasi Tii Washington (born February 18, 1981) is an American arranger, composer and jazz saxophonist. He is a founding member of the jazz collective West Coast Get Down.
Career
Washington was born in 1981 and raised in Los Angeles, California. He is a graduate of the Academy of Music of Alexander Hamilton High School in Beverlywood, Los Angeles. Washington next enrolled in UCLA's Department of Ethnomusicology, where he began playing with faculty members such as Kenny Burrell, Gerald Wilson, and Billy Higgins, who mentored a quartet with Washington, pianist Cameron Graves, and the brothers Stephen ("Thundercat") and Ronald Bruner. They released their debut album Young Jazz Giants in 2004 on Birdman Records.
Washington joined the Gerald Wilson Orchestra for its 2005 album In My Time. In 2008 and 2009 "The Kamasi Washington Band" played the outdoor Labor Day Jazz Concert on the Main Green at Village Green, Los Angeles. Washington played saxophone on Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp a Butterfly, released on March 15, 2015. Washington's debut solo recording, The Epic, was released in May 2015.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16221677. VIAF identifies the subject as 315533910. The Library of Congress control number is no2009087486. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2004, 2005 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kamasi Washington” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.