Qobuz

Los Angeles is the polar opposite of the New York jazz scene and its firm caste system: you have to be a chameleon in order to be able to play with everyone. It comes as no surprise, then, that the greats of jazz history born or raised in LA have never been like the rest: Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, Horace Tapscott, and Gerald Wilson are just a fe... See more

Yet Washington is far from being the only one to emerge from the bustling LA scene: Thundercat’s striking bass has also resonated just about everywhere. Producer and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin, close friend of Kendrick Lamar, also played the role of teacher and go-between: he took Washington on the journey that became To Pimp a Butterfly ... See more

And thanks to a music teacher at Locke High School in Watts, who would pick up the young prodigies from school to take them home after rehearsals, he joined an orchestra for gifted teens. Everyone who’s anyone on the current LA scene was there at some stage. The collective West Coast Get Down, which lacks a true leader but whose most well-known mem... See more