Jazz Articles
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Lafayette Gilchrist: Now
by Ian Patterson
For much of the 2010s, Baltimore-based pianist/composer Lafayette Gilchrist has looked to larger ensembles to give voice to his expansive arrangements. In fact, you have to go back to Three (Hyena, 2007) to find his previous trio outing. With Now, Gilchrist embraces a more intimate setting in the company of drummer Eric Kennedy and bassist Herman Burnie. It's a triumphant, grass-roots return that showcases the dazzling breadth and originality of Gilchrist's pianism and the enduring appeal of the piano trio ...
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by Franz A. Matzner
Pianist and composer Lafayette Gilchrist has made clear that, in part, Now addresses the racial and political conflicts erupting across America in 2020. The music is suitably intense and tumultuous. The album demands change while also reminding us that the violence and divisions splintering the country are not new. The repression and oppression embedded in American race relations has been pervasive for an unconscionably long time. Gilchrest pointedly underscores this through pieces like “Bmore Careful," which pulses forward ...
read moreLafayette Gilchrist: Now
by Geno Thackara
In some alternate world somewhere, Lafayette Gilchrist is a great modern American novelist, spinning real-life stories that vividly evoke the spirit of the times. In our world, he ended up as a comparable spirit doing the same thing in the music realm instead. His piano playing nonetheless criss-crosses the span of jazz, blues, funk, gospel, ragtime, boogie and much else besides, weaving all manner of familiar elements in the way other storytellers would thread recognizable slices of life into their ...
read moreLafayette Gilchrist: Dark Matter
by Jerome Wilson
It would seem almost impossible by this point for a jazz pianist to avoid common modern influences like Bud Powell, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner or even Cecil Taylor, but somehow Lafayette Gilchrist falls outside all of those parameters. On this solo concert recorded at the University of Baltimore in 2016, he shows a keyboard style built on materials like stride, gospel and go-go, the infectious party music from the Baltimore-Washington DC area, all turned into its own unique sound.
read moreLafayette Gilchrist: Dark Matter
by Franz A. Matzner
Recorded live, pianist Lafayette Gilchrist's second solo recording, Dark Matter, embraces the long history of jazz bound to the beat and textures of a specific time and place, rather than stylistic pedigree or lineage of influencers. Its rhythms are the jackhammer throb, subway rattle, and relentless pulse of Baltimore, Philly, and Washington, D.C. It's textures the rust laden steel, aged brick, languid nights, and hardened density of these original East Coast cities; our remnants of the railroad era, bastions of ...
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