“Mastery is important, but connecting — connecting with people, to an audience — for me that’s what it’s about.” For drummer Washington Duke, whose debut EP In Time releases on November 22nd, 2024, being a musician is about more than just perfecting a craft. “There’s a balance,” he adds, “between brilliance on an instrument and moving people with music.” Achieving both is the pinnacle.
Washington cites John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins as a few who found that magic keyhole. Their genius — on their instruments, in pulling together just the right musicians, in their ability to share, musically, their imaginations — unlocked something indescribable and timeless. “That’s artistry. That is the distinction between being a musician and being an artist.”
Guided by that sensibility, Washington has created In Time. Calling on a trio format that has long been a source of inspiration — and the one used for a favorite recording, Sonny Rollins’s A Night at the Village Vanguard — In Time uses tenor saxophone, bass, and drums to weave precision and improvisation, rhythm and melody, simplicity and complexity, light and dark.
As the double-entendre album title suggests, In Time has been in the works for decades, a product of Washington’s listening, feeling, and ultimately, his understanding of music. He picked up the drums at the age of 10 after struggling at the piano, the saxophone, and the clarinet.
“I had tremendous trouble reading music, it seemed like a foreign language I would never understand. I faked my way through elementary school band rehearsals until the teacher figured out what was going on.” When a friend urged him to try the drums, he found he “could do it almost instantly. Drumming is visceral,” he said, “it made sense to me and I connected to it immediately. I could understand what I heard on records and I became obsessed with learning how to play.”
By the age of twelve he and some friends put together a band, covering Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones, playing for friends and neighbors. Other bands followed but by college Washington was playing mostly jazz. “I was drawn to improvisation, and I wanted to be a better drummer. Jazz is the highest form of improvisation and mastery of the instrument.”
Paul Jeffrey needed a second drummer for the Duke University Jazz Ensemble in 1995 when young Washington was looking at colleges. By then, Jeffrey, a tenor saxophonist whose resume included recording and performing with Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus, Lionel Hampton, and BB King, was running the school’s Jazz Studies program and directing the Jazz Ensemble. Jeffrey had assembled a strong orchestra of students and local musicians to support performances by visiting eminent jazz players, such as Barry Harris, Walter Bishop, Mark Whitfield, and Curtis Fuller, among others.
One artist on that list was master drummer Michael Carvin, who took Washington on as a student, a relationship that has lasted to this day, ultimately resulting in a collaboration that brought about In Time.
By the end of Washington’s freshman year, he was the ensemble’s first drummer. “Paul was old school,” Washington reflected. “He came from a sink or swim mentality and an era when most of your musical education happened on the bandstand, for better or worse.”
Turns out Washington swam. In the ensuing years, he toured in Europe with Jeffrey and performed weekly in Durham, N.C., where Duke University is located, with Jeffrey’s quartet. At the end of his freshman year, at the age of 19, he was invited to record with Jeffrey and renowned trombonist Curtis Fuller. Watching Jeffrey perform, manage the ensemble, orchestrate, and just make it all work, set Washington on his own course.
In the years after college Washington moved to New York City and worked on his craft — playing with various Jazz, Latin, Funk, R&B, Hip-Hop and Rock & Roll artists. He became proficient in all those styles of popular music, learned to pair his talent with others, and eventually led several of his own bands. Most importantly, Washington remained a student — always seeking out music and exploring what resonated with him, refining those experiences to shape his own voice and expression on the drums.
For In Time Washington called on musicians from different moments in his career. He had crossed paths with tenor saxophonist Joey Johnson in Durham, N.C. when Paul Jeffrey took Johnson under his wing for the Duke Jazz Ensemble. Johnson was just 15 years old at the time. “I hear so much of Paul in Joey’s playing. Even as a kid, he always had such a beautiful tone and, like Paul, his own voice and approach to the music.”
Another of Washington’s college bandmates and student of Jeffrey’s, Geoffrey Burke, connected Washington with Corcoran Holt. Currently one of Jazz’s most revered bass players, Holt was a fortuitous addition for In Time. “Corcoran is truly special. I called him out of the blue. We’d never met or played together, a lot of musicians of his stature might not have even taken the call. But when we spoke I knew there was a connection. I’ve played in many bands, and I’ve led a few, and the best music I ever made was always with people I connect with personally and spiritually. Corcoran is no exception.”
In Time was recorded in two days in August of 2021 during the pandemic. Washington had used the time in isolation to reconnect with his drums, with the music that inspires him, and with his teacher of 25 years prior, Michael Carvin — who would become the album’s producer. Their meetings, and that moment itself, was the final catalyst for In Time. “The time spent at home was an opportunity to disconnect from the non-essential, reconvene with the spirit, to acknowledge the gifts that were given and the teachers who gave them, and to begin again. It was a moment, an ending and a beginning, in time.”
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The album is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Paul Jeffrey, along with Washington’s late father, Anthony Duke, who never relented, urging his son to drum on.