Master: Carl Grubbs Apprentice: Lafayette Gilchrist Master-Apprentice Recipient, 2008
Deeply rooted in the African-American oral tradition of jazz, saxophone player Carl Grubbs blends virtuosic improvisational skill with the aesthetic, historical, and social fundamentals of jazz. Grubbs was raised in a musical family: his mother played music for her church, his father played blues piano, and his cousin was John Coltrane. Grubbs had his first clarinet at age 13, and at age 14 asked his cousin how it was that he was playing saxophone without the use of sheet music. “I was improvising,” explained Coltrane in what would be the defining conversation of Grubbs’ musical life. Grubbs taught his apprentice, pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, improvisational and melodic techniques. “You have to get as close to the source as you can,” Gilchrist said. “And I recognized early on that Carl was close to the source.”
