I've always been very particular when it comes to piano playing, or at least listening to piano players, as I couldn't play the thing to save my life. It doesn't matter whether it's a classical, jazz, or pop performance, but it has always taken a very specific type of player for me to able to warm up to the instrument. For some reason there is something about the tone, or the quality of the music, produced by the way it's played that will often leave me feeling emotionally cold. It doesn't matter how technically gifted an individual is, it seems to require some sort of extraordinary gift to generate emotional warmth when playing the piano.

Of course it may have to do with how fiendishly difficult an instrument it is to play with any degree of proficiency, and the amount of rigorous training in technique that so many players have to undergo in order to amass the skill set required to do what is needed to even play the damn thing. There is such a focus on learning how that to bring any soul to the proceedings requires more than what some people can accomplish. I think back to the late Glenn Gould, classical piano player, who for the last fifteen years of his life refused to play in public because of his desire to only produce mistake free music. I once saw a documentary on him which showed him in the recording studio adjusting the pitch of individual notes with technology so that they would ring exactly true.

Okay, so Gould was known for his eccentricities, and for being a tad over the top, but it was listening to his playing that encouraged me to keep listening to piano music. You could feel his music, if you'll excuse the pun, strike a chord within. He might have been obsessed with the technical side of playing, but it was only because he cared about the music. It was that caring, his emotional commitment, that you could feel being transmitted every time he sat down at a keyboard and played. Perhaps it's unfair to use genius as a yardstick for measuring other people, but once you find an ideal it becomes impossible to ignore it. I know I'm constantly listening for echoes of that caring every time I listen to a piano player.

That doesn't mean I expect all piano players to sound like Glenn Gould, but I look for characteristics in their playing that remind me of what captured my imagination about his playing all those year ago. I came across Lafayette Gilchrist, while trolling through the Hyena Records web site and something about him caught my attention. It piqued my interest sufficiently and I asked the label to send me out a copy of his most recent release, Soul Progressin'

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