The School of Music and the student-run Improvised Music Project (IMP) present IMPFest, featuring UW Jazz Studies students and faculty performing with guest artists of international renown. Headliners for this year's festival are Grammy nominated drummer, producer, and emcee Kassa Overall and Icelandic composer and bass guitarist Skùli Sverisson.
Friday Night Headliner: Kassa Overall with UW students and faculty
Saturday Night Headliner: Skùli Sverisson wtih UW students and faculty
Artist Biography
KASSA OVERALL is a Grammy-nominated jazz artist, drummer, emcee, singer and producer. He seamlessly blends jazz, hip-hop and avant-garde experimentation into a sound uniquely his own. His music is both innovative and accessible, pushing the boundaries of genre while remaining deeply engaging. Overall has released seven critically acclaimed mixtapes and albums, including I Think I’m Good and Go Get Ice Cream and Listen to Jazz. His latest project, CREAM, reinterprets eight hip-hop classics as if they were 1960's jazz instrumentals. It features tracks from artists like The Notorious B.I.G., Wu-Tang Clan, and OutKast, blending improvisation with hip-hop roots. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Overall has been a driving force in the jazz world for over two decades. In 2020, he was called “one of modern jazz music’s most audacious futurists” by Pitchfork. He has toured and recorded with renowned artists like Geri Allen, Jon Batiste, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Terri Lyne Carrington, and Gary Bartz, and his production work can be heard on albums by Theo Croker, Arto Lindsay and Danny Brown. A Seattle native, Kassa Overall attended Washington MS and Garfield HS. A child drum prodigy, he taught himself to make beats on an MPC and an ASR 10 he acquired at a Seattle Police Department auction.