Charles Gayle: piano

Editor's info:
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.