These days, Brandon Coleman has exactly one thing on his mind:

“Trying to influence the music industry to produce more original music instead of just the status quo,” says the keyboardist/vocalist/arranger.

If anyone could do it, Coleman just might be the guy. Over the past decade and change, the man sometimes known as “Professor Boogie” has collaborated with many of the most influential musicians of our era, contributing piano, keys, or arrangements to works by Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat (among others), as well as working as writing partner with R&B powerhouse Babyface. In 2018, he released his first solo album, the bold, conscious and interdimensionally funky Resistance, via Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label.

This weekend, Coleman and band make a stop downtown for San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest. His appearance comes at a busy time in the already busy musician’s career. On top of planning and prepping for tour and his normal work writing arrangements, he’s recently started a record label, a production company and even begun producing a TV show—all while working on his second solo album.

“I feel like the music I’m doing now is just along the lines of my life,” he says. “It’s an amalgam of all of my thoughts, and all of the records that have influenced me.”

Already, Resistance was quite an amalgam. Mixing jazz, disco, R&B, hip hop and film scores, and running them all through a funky, space-age filter, the expansive album fit in few boxes. Even its recording was unorthodox: Coleman recorded Resistance over the span of about six years, taking advantage of unused hours from sessions with his many collaborators. If you hear flecks of stardust on the P-Funk-via-J-Dilla thump of “Giant Feelings,” or feel transported to an interplanetary current on the title track, possibly that’s because both were recorded during the same session as Kamasi Washington’s galactic modern jazz goliath The Epic.

“I’d record in different studios, for different projects, and just be like, ‘I like this song, I’ll tuck it away,’” Coleman recalls.

So when Flying Lotus asked him about doing a solo record, the two sat down and started combing through all the songs he’d put together. Right away, the visionary producer started gravitating towards one thing.

“He really wanted to stick with the funky stuff,” Coleman remembers. “Once I got an idea of what the record label wanted, I pieced together songs based on that. I found all the funky stuff on my hard drive.”

Resistance is certainly funky. After a cinematic swell of strings that rises like leaves in a gentle updraft, the beat kicks in on a thick groove, setting the stage for Coleman to let loose a statement of purpose: “I’m in it for the rest of my life.” From that point on, Resistance is all swagger and float, picking up confidence with each unexpected influence brought in, from filmic woodwind flares, to interstellar disco strings.

One major component of the record is Coleman’s consistent use of vocoder, the roboticizing vocal effect originally pioneered for espionage. Vocoder appears on nearly all of Coleman’s vocal tracks on the album, sometimes in subtle ways—as on the smooth falsetto from “There’s No Turning Back”—sometimes in ways impossible to overlook, as on the melody from retro-futurist robo-sex jam “Sexy.” At all times, it is an undeniable part of Resistance.

“I have not seen anybody use the vocoder the way I’m using it,” he says. “People use it as a novelty. It’s like they think of it as a vocoder. I don’t see it as a vocoder. I see it as the human voice—but electric.”

But just as any revolution must first begin within, Coleman won’t be repeating himself while fighting for a more original music industry. He vows his next record will be bound neither by funk, nor any other genre.

“The stuff that I’m writing now is more unapologetic: I don’t really care about other people’s thoughts about my music anymore. I’ve just let that go completely. And because of that, it’s opened up a new door to wherever I can go,” he says. “The Black diaspora is so much more than just making people dance. I’m just using my creativity to help expand the diaspora.”

Brandon Coleman
Sat, 3pm, $35
Hammer Theatre Stage, San Jose

In a sense, Los Angeles-based jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington had it all. At just 19, he began touring with Snoop Dogg, which led to gigs backing up greats like the “Queen of Funk” Chaka Khan and jazz fusion bassist Stanley Clarke. More recently, his resume landed him a credit on Kendrick Lamar’s latest LP, To Pimp a Butterfly.

As a virtuoso, he could have easily carved out a career of steady work as a session player and hired gun on the road. But Washington and his friends, a loose collection of musicians known as the West Coast Get Down, knew they didn’t want to settle for in-demand support gigs, as their fathers had. They wanted the world to hear what they had to say.

And so Washington came out swinging. His debut full-length is a sprawling, no-holds-barred, three-disc opus, fittingly titled The Epic. With it, Washington has announced himself as one of the most talented and visionary figures on the burgeoning Los Angeles jazz scene.

This weekend, local audiences will have two opportunities to see Washington. He is scheduled to open San Jose Jazz Summer Fest’s Kaiser Permanente Main Stage at noon on Sunday with his band, The Next Step. Sunday night, he’ll close the California Theatre Stage with the West Coast Get Down collective.

To understand The Epic, it’s important to grasp Kamasi Washington’s musical past. As a teen in South Central Los Angeles, he formed the Young Jazz Giants with pianist Cameron Graves, drummer Ronald Bruner and Ronald’s brother, Stephen—better known as the Kendrick Lamar collaborator and producer, Thundercat—on bass.

“We were really focused,” Washington says, reflecting on that period. “We knew what we wanted to do in life. We were playing all day long, all night, going to jam sessions, sneaking into concerts, driving all over the city.”

Washington and his crew formed a “creative core” and found support in the greater L.A. area. The trick was pushing their ideas beyond the region.

The decades-long struggle among L.A.’s jazz community to step out from under the shadow of the New York scene may help explain the powerful tension that exists on Washington’s nearly three-hour outing, with its domineering, maximalist approach.

The album features hard-driving solos and a double rhythm section, composed of two drummers, two bassists and two keyboard players. String orchestra and choir arrangements float in and out of the mix, adding musical density to the already massive sound.

Ten seconds into the opening track, “Change of the Guard,” Kamasi and company live up to the album’s lofty title, unleashing a wall of sound that pushes the record to its limit. Eight minutes in, Washington’s tenor sax screams while pianos stab out sharp chords; the supporting strings slather on a layer of unruly tension that doesn’t let up over the track’s 12-minutes.

“Re Run Home,” the 14-minute opus that opens Epic’s third disc, simmers with urgency from start to finish, firmly grounded by the dual drum work of Ronald Bruner Jr. and Tony Austin. Ryan Porter and Igmar Thomas trade trombone and trumpet licks until their solos weave into one another, creating a musical synergy at once competitive and supportive. This open interplay is a hallmark of the album, and a testament not only to Washington but the world-class talent surrounding him on this project.

The Epic wasn’t created in a vacuum. It’s the latest work in a continuation of the sound Washington and his friends have collectively been creating for years—all with the steadfast support of Brainfeeder boss Steven Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus. The L.A.-based producer and leading voice in L.A.’s wide-open, forward-thinking, jazz-inflected music scene gave Washington the space and support to create whatever he wanted. For this, Washington is grateful.

“So often, the music has to struggle with the business,” Washington says. “It’s really cool when the business is just down and cool to let you do what you want to do.”

As Washington tells it, his father’s development was halted by the “pitfall of not believing in yourself enough to push your own music.” Washington doesn’t suffer from the same self-doubt about his musical ability. The way he sees it, the only real challenge is the clock. Washington is racing to get all his creativity out while he still can.

“In the end, time will run out,” Washington says. “There’s a time limit to how long you’ll have this gift at the highest level that you have it.” And so he will continue to play—as if his life depends on it.

Kamasi Washington plays San Jose Jazz Summer Fest on Aug. 9 at 12pm on the Kaiser Main Stage and at 7pm at the California Theatre Stage.