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‘Dark matter is what keeps everything from drifting apart’
Pianist LAFAYETTE GILCHRIST talks to Chris Searle about the unifying force inspiring his latest album

ONE of jazz’s prime pianists, who through his musical life has absorbed many US genres, from swing, gospel and stride to hip-hop and free improvisation, Lafayette Gilchrist was a part of epochal saxophonist David Murray’s quartet for 13 years.

Born in Washington DC in 1967, he started to play piano when, at the age of 17, he came to live in Baltimore.

“Duke Ellington and Theolonius Monk were, and remain my musical inspirations,” he declares, and his years with Murray “affirmed and helped to inform what I was already working on and the direction I was going in music.”

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