Lafayette Gilchrist

Lafayette Gilchrist (born August 3, 1967) is an American jazz pianist and composer. As of January 2014, he lived in Baltimore.

Gilchrist leads an octet/nonet named the New Volcanoes, and a trio called Inside Out (with bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Eric Kennedy). Gilchrist acknowledges multiple influences on his music: "I come from hip-hop culture, [...] I'm not a rapper. I'm not a DJ. I'm not a dancer. But I feed off of all that. All of that's part of what I grew up in, what I grew up around." His mother, Janice Taylor Murdock, worked for the Federal Aviation Administration. Gilchrist's mother remarried when he was 14, at which point they moved to Prince George's County. Brown played jazz standards in a different style; Gilchrist observed that "it taught me that you can combine funk grooves and jazz". He taught himself to play and compose music, A 2012 recording of the same group also contained a mix of styles: one reviewer described one track from It Came from Baltimore: Live at the Windup Space Vol. 1 as containing elements of "Pop and the avant-garde, old and new, free-jazz and funk, hip-hop and rock, modernist dissonance and sentimental grooves". Gilchrist's New Urban World Blues was a musical re-telling of the 2015 Baltimore uprising that began with the death of a young African American man and is chronicled in the song "Blues for Freddie Gray". A 4-volume set titled Compendium was released on Manta Ray Records in 2017.

His composition "Assume the Position" was used in the score for the HBO drama television series The Wire. His compositions have also been used in the HBO series Treme and The Deuce.

Playing style and influences An NPR reviewer commented that Gilchrist's "two-handed piano [...] has techno and minimalism behind it. It's not just about the notes; it's also about the waves in which they come, and the troughs in between".

Composing style Gilchrist has stated that his compositions for the New Volcanoes "build from small things to big things, from settlements to villages to cities; I never start with the whole city. [...] That's what we're all about: breaking the music up in the middle and then re-gathering the pieces".

Discography An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release.

As leader

As sideman Year recorded Leader Title Label 2010 Sharing the Shed BMC 2006* Mudfoot Jones / The Basement Boys The Basement Boys Present Mudfoot Jones Savoy 2002 Waltz Again Justin Time 2006 Sacred Ground Justin Time 2007 Live in Berlin Jazzwerkstatt