Lafayette Gilchrist

Gilchrist was born in Washington, D.C., on August 3, 1967; 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, and received feedback on his compositions from music students. He graduated in 1992, with a BA in African-American studies. ==Career==

In 1993 Gilchrist formed the New Volcanoes, as a quartet that also contained trumpeter Freddie Dunn, bassist Vince Loving, and drummer Nate Reynolds. 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 Main sources: ==External links==