The saxophonist turns director with a new short film exploring youth and humanity.

The thing about Mr Kamasi Washington is that he’s as unapologetically and brilliantly cosmic as you imagined he would be. He is often depicted, dubiously, as some sort of saxophonist shaman, pied piper-ing thousands of global music fans yet to be sold the virtues of jazz over the rhythmically challenging threshold into noodling abandon. But the reality is, well, quite like that. Yes, he is partial to wearing a robe. Yes, at some point during our interview there is mention of a colleague’s cannabis vape being charged. And, yes, a conversation with Mr Washington can make you wonder whether you actually entered the cafe through a hologram and are sitting in another dimension while you talk about music, film, life, the universe and everything in between.

“I live in my head more than I live outside of it,” he says softly, with a knowing smile. When he’s not making music he’s “reading comic books all day and staring out the window, imagining my own little worlds. I’m deep into my little surrealist fantasies right now, I’m way deep in there.”

Mr Washington has been called the de facto CEO of the new jazz revolution, which started around when he appeared on Mr Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly album in 2015 and has since spread to London, where a young jazz scene is in full flight. He’s also been busy making movies. He’s in London this week not just to headline a show at Brixton’s O2 Academy, but for a run of screenings of his hypnagogic mini-film As Told To G/D Thyself, which he has co-directed with a collective of filmmakers called the Ummah Chroma that includes Ms Jenn Nkiru, who created the Louvre visuals for Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “Apes * * t” video, and Selma cinematographer Mr Bradford Young.

The short film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last month and was inspired by the sweeping suites of Mr Washington’s second full-length release, 2018’s double-sided concept album Heaven And Earth. Mr Washington was already a big name in the jazz world prior to his sophomore record, having released a critically acclaimed debut, The Epic, played at Coachella with a choir and launched an EP at the Whitney Museum. But the majestic-sounding Heaven And Earth could be said to have tipped him further into mainstream consciousness. The record topped end-of-year lists everywhere and at the recent Brit Awards he was nominated in the Best International Male category alongside Eminem and Drake.