Stuart Levitan on Thursday 04/04/2013
Jazz pianist and composer Gerald Clayton has known his life's calling since a third-grade talent show. The Grammy-nominated artist played a little boogie-woogie piece he had worked on with his father, noted jazz bassist John Clayton. Music was already a constant in his life, but this performance was the first time he felt its power as a creator.
"That rush of playing for a group of people who are enjoying the music, that first buzz hit, and everything felt right," he says.
While he went on to skateboarding and soccer, and got "really passionate about surfing," music "always felt like home base."
The comfort shows. The 28-year-old plays with a sophisticated reassurance that belies his youth, a vibrancy that proclaims his joy.
"The Claytons are smilers, trying to emit joy before anything else," he says. "If you do this for the right reason, for the love of the music, the rest will take care of itself."
He's maintained that musically nurturing environment into adulthood, living in the same Harlem apartment building as the other original members of his trio, bassist Joe Sanders and drummer Justin Brown. The group will perform at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on April 6, as part of the Isthmus Jazz Series.
Clayton has already had quite a year, with three new entries in his discography.Life Forum, released this week, features five additional close friends, including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, an Isthmus Jazz Series alumnus. The Clayton Brothers Quintet, led by his dad and his uncle, flutist and saxophonist Jeff Clayton, issued The Gathering, a straight-ahead jazz album on which he plays piano. And on Terri Lyne Carrington's 50th-anniversary homage to Duke Ellington's Money Jungle, he took over for Ellington himself.
Read more: http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=39568
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