Jazz Articles about Charles Gayle

Charles Gayle: Time Zones

by Jerry D'Souza
March 6, 2006

If Charles Gayle had not already made a piano recording (Jazz Solo Piano, Knitting Factory, 2000), this one would have come as a more of a surprise. To repeat what has been said often enough, Gayle is best known as a saxophonist whose horn spews molten lava. But his first love was the piano. And while the earlier effort was comprised of jazz standards, this one features all original material.

Gayle firmly stamps his credentials as a pianist ...

Charles Gayle: Time Zones

by Nic Jones
February 28, 2006

As Charles Gayle has forged himself a parallel path as a pianist, he has afforded listeners an entirely different insight into his musical thinking. This is just as it should be with any individual who specialises in instruments as different as the piano and the tenor sax.

Time Zones might just be his most successfully realised piano work on record. As a solo pianist, he has an uncanny and most welcome knack for being himself, and while Cecil Taylor references ...

Charles Gayle: Shout!

by Rex Butters
November 13, 2005

Charles Gayle's discography has grown steadily since his reemergence in the '80s. Spiritually motivated like so many of his '60s free jazz peers, Gayle presents a program of Gospel-influenced tunes, new takes on standards, and bracing trio improvisations that continually churn sparks. More lyrical and less strident than he sounds on older recordings, Gayle maintains a gift for unpredictability and deep listening.

Joined by drummer Gerald Cleaver and legendary bassist and longtime collaborator Sirone, Gayle plays a fountain of music. ...

Charles Gayle: Shout!

by Dennis Hollingsworth
June 9, 2005

Charles Gayle is without question one of the most intriguing figures in modern jazz today. His powerful, free, and onerous style defies easy categorization. His background as a vagabond New York street musician adds mystique, like the Renaissance artists who toiled without financial reward while pushing the envelope of art and music beyond conventional boundaries. He is a devout Christian and concerned citizen whose willingness to speak his mind does not always jive with club owners. He has performed in ...

Charles Gayle 3: Precious Soul

by Derek Taylor
March 1, 2001

Like the Holy Trinity at the cynosure of Charles Gayle's religious faith the trio of leader, bass and drums exists as the foundation for nearly all of his music. Even his explorations into larger instrumentations have at their core the central stanchion of this steadfast template. Solo settings are the only other context where he is afforded greater liberty and as several recordings have documented this kind of absolute seclusion can sometimes work against him. It's no coincidence then that ...

Charles Gayle

by Robert Spencer
June 11, 2000

Charles Gayle blew down with hurricane force--the pun is too obvious--out of Buffalo. He drifted in and out of the first great free jazz scenes of the Sixties, playing with Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and other trailblazers. But he says now that his sound then was even more fiery and forceful than it is now, and he couldn't get a recording date. He drifted. He became homeless. He lived as a squatter in an abandoned Lower East Side tenement. He ...

Charles Gayle: Ancient of Days

by Robert Spencer
May 1, 2000

Charles Gayle is the ultimate power tenor man. Most of his recordings, notably Repent, Consecration, and More Live at the Knitting Factory are vats of molten lead, music to go through the wall headfirst. He's a master of the altissimo register of the tenor, and of the screams and cries that, he says, come straight out of the church, of the sanctified ecstasy of Pentecostalism.

Anyone who dismisses him as a mere screamer, however, dismisses the abundant evidence on his ...