“It’s been said you are a great math student, which surely must have helped you in music…
Yea, it definitely helps in terms of transpositions and organization of notes. It really comes into play there; especially when I was in college, where I was a composition and musicology major. I was also taking really high-level math and science courses along with my music classes. It’s funny, because I always felt that math was just another language. It’s like a second vocabulary, even when you get deeper and deeper into it. And it expands upon your own vocabulary, just like English, Spanish or French. They really are related in a way that people don’t realize.”
Source: Writer Ron Hart included bit of an interview with Kamasi Washington, American jazz saxophonist, composer, production editor and band leader in his article about The 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2015.