B’more Bridges Concert: Lafayette Gilchrist, piano + Gregory Thompkins, tenor saxophone

Frederick Experimental Music Association will present B’more Bridges, a series of three concerts of improvised music, intermedia, and jazz, by renowned Baltimore artists at the YMCA of Frederick County’s Y Arts Center, located at 115 East Church Street in downtown Frederick, Maryland. Doors open for each concert at 7:30, with performances beginning at 8:00. Admission for each concert is $20 – no cards.

Baltimore has long been on the cutting edge of performing and visual arts, a status sustained by the artists included in B’more Bridges. Their reputation for uncompromising work extends far beyond the city, earning them national and international recognition in their respective fields. B’more Bridges is an opportunity to experience a cross section of one of the more vital arts communities in the US.

Friday, December 6
Lafayette Gilchrist, piano + Gregory Thompkins, tenor saxophone

Familiar to Frederick audiences from his performances at the Weinberg Center and New Spire Arts, pianist Lafayette Gilchrist returns in duo with his longtime colleague, tenor saxophonist Gregory Thompkins. The pianist NPR called “an old soul, at ease in the modern world,” Gilchrist has an encyclopedic knowledge of the jazz piano tradition, and can invoke the spirits of Ellington, Monk, and others at any moment. The Music Director of the Baltimore Jazz Education Project, Thompkins has absorbed the tenor tradition from Coleman Hawkins onward to creative ends. After years of working together in Gilchrist’s New Volcanoes and other settings, this will be their first duo concert.