The title isn’t kidding – this is a 172-minute spectacular for choir, classical orchestra and jazz band. Leader Kamasi Washington, a flamethrower of a saxophonist with John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders connections, also works for West Coast hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar. Dedicated to bringing jazz to the uninitiated, Epic features soul and gospel vocals, boiling drumming (Art Blakey was a declared inspiration), swing, funk, and voicelike free-jazz blowing. Swing riffs, wailing Hammond organs, the bebop vehicle Cherokee turned into a slinky soul vocal, a big-band account of Debussy’s Clair de Lune – it all goes into a venture that has links to the large-scale jazz of Sun Ra and the 1960s Jazz Composers’ and Liberation Music orchestras. Only a shortage of thematic surprises – given its extravagant length – keeps it from being quite the seismically jazz-changing departure that some admirers are claiming.
