Charles Gayle Time Zones CD

Personnel: Charles Gayle (piano); Charles Gayle.
Recording information: Sony Music Studios, New York, NY.
Photographer: Julie Marr.
Avant-garde jazz musician Charles Gayle made his name in the 1960s and '70s as an incendiary horn player. However, on this 2006 set of solo pieces, he confines himself to piano. Or perhaps confines isn't a good word--Gayle's style incorporates a solid musical technique, laced with modernist flourishes, and his frequently inspired improvisations often soar off on stratospheric free music tangents. More relaxed and lyrical than his often frenetic previous solo keyboard outing, 2001's JAZZ SOLO PIANO, TIME ZONES contains gems like the meditative "Rush to Sunrise" and the down-home "Blues in Mississippi" that reveal the onetime homeless street performer to have lost none of his improvisational fire and intelligence.
Charles Gayle is best known as a tenor saxophonist with a ferocious and unremittingly free style. On piano he is much more versatile and at times rather lyrical, while still being quite original. On his solo piano set Time Zones, Gayle performs seven of his intriguing originals, blending together hints of his youth (including stride piano, chord voicings worthy of Duke Ellington, and runs reminiscent of Art Tatum) with lessons learned from playing free à la Cecil Taylor. Melodic fragments are often utilized as the basis for the pieces quite effectively, and Gayle's "Blues In Mississippi" is a colorful spaced-out blues, filled with raging tone clusters yet played at a relaxed tempo. Most of the improvising is actually taken out of tempo, allowing one to hear Charles Gayle thinking aloud through his unique combination of piano styles. Recommended. ~ Scott YanowThe Wire (p.45) - "It's a fine and involving record, all originals and all beautifully played."
JazzTimes (p.142) - "Unexpectedly infused with premodern devices from stride, blues and swing, it contains moments of coherence and even fractured lyricism."