Photo by Baynard Woods
Creative Differences Presents World Premier Music
Lafayette Gilchrist and The New Volcanoes – Duped Again
[audio:http://whatweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Lafayette-Gilchrist-New-Volcanoes-Duped-Again.mp3]The slightly shambolic looking piano player finished his solo and leapt up from the bench, almost like Jerry Lee Lewis, and pointed at the bass-player, signaling it was time to tell his story.
“I don’t ever tell anybody to take a solo. That’s why so many jazz guys don’t work in my band. I want the song to be a character and I want you to tell me how your particular story fits in with the overall story.”
Lafayette Gilchrist is a master of the piano, but like Duke Ellington, his real instrument is his band. Gilchrist, who didn’t begin playing piano until he was attending college at UMBC, told me “I got it from Duke. From the beginning I wanted to be a band-leader. In the beginning I wasn’t good enough to play with other people.”
Now, he’s certainly good enough to play with anyone, but he still thinks of himself as a bandleader and composer. “I write all the music, but that’s only half the story because I write for the individuals in the band. Writing is setting up a framework and situations where they can each be their most individual self.”
That’s as good a definition of jazz as any, and Gilchrist’s New Volcanoes certainly shined with intense individuality in a number of new Gilchrist compositions being recorded live at the Windup Space on Saturday, January 29.
Photo and story by Baynard Woods.
Photo by Baynard Woods
Guitar great Carl Fillipiak sat in for the evening. Gilchrist said that whenever they played it felt like “melting together.” Fillipiak not only added some great riffs, but an element of surprise. He is a master of tone and coaxed a seemingly infinite variety of sounds from his guitar. At one point, he made it squawk like a sax, and I saw Gregory Thompkins and Tiffany Defoe—the band’s two tenor sax players—turn and look to see who blew the note.
The two tenor players each brought a unique sound to the band. Of Defoe, Gilchrist said “there are a lot of great soloists in jazz, but few people who really think in an ensemble fashion. Defoe, who also plays in the Belvederes, and the Baltimore Afrobeat Soci
