KIRK LIGHTSEY
Kirkland "Kirk" Lightsey is an American pianist who has worked with Dexter Gordon, Gregory Porter, Chet Baker, Bobby Hutcherson, Kenny Burrell, Marcus Belgrave and countless others. He toured with Dexter Gordon for 5 years and was also a member of The Leaders, a Jazz supergroup from the late 1980s. Pianist and flautist Kirk Lightsey is a sophisticated improvisor with a lithe touch and a bent toward expansive, post-bop, modal jazz and warmly rendered standards.
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1937, Lightsey first began playing piano at age five and grew up listening to swing and big-band music via radio and his mother's record collection. Later, he studied privately with legendary teacher Gladys Wade Dillard, who also tutored fellow Detroit luminaries as Barry Harris, Alice Coltrane and Tommy Flanagan. It was while attending Cass Technical High School alongside classmates Paul Chambers, Ron Carter and Hugh Lawson, that he became interested in jazz. At the school orchestra he played clarinet, but afternoons were spent playing piano at Barry Harris' house, where he learned to improvise. Although talented enough on clarinet to earn a scholarship to Wayne State University in 1954, he instead chose to pursue a career as a jazz pianist.
Moving to New York in the mid 1960s, his first jazz recordings were on trumpeter Chet Baker and saxophonist George Coleman’s Prestige sessions from 1965. Moving to California at the end of the decade, he recorded and gigged alongside artists such as Pharoah Sanders, Bobby Hutcherson, Esther Philips and Harold Land, and in 1974 paired with saxophonist Rudolph Johnson for the highly sought after “Habiba” album for the South African Gallo label. But it was only in 1982, at the age of 45, during his extensive period with Dexter Gordon, that he finally recorded his first album as a single leader, the “Lightsey 1” album for Sunnyside Records, signaling a steep increase in his recorded output.
Since then he has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Sunnyside and the Swiss Criss Cross Jazz labels, as well as releasing albums for record labels such as Timeless, Limetree and Evidence. In 1988 Kirk was voted among the top pianists in the world by the Downbeat International Critics’ Poll, and in 1989 he was chosen as one of Steinway’s preferred artists. Defining himself as incorporating “a Bud Powell awareness, an Art Tatum styling, a bebop feeling and a pianist approach,” Kirk is a master of the oblique melodic statement, crafting perfectly balanced phrases and favoring subtlety over fireworks, which may account for his relatively modest profile, despite the outstanding nature and wide spanning reach of his musical achievements and persona.
Kirk Lightsey has been living in Paris since 1993.
Selected Discography (as Band leader)
Habiba (Gallo, 1974) with Rudolph Johnson
Lightsey 1 (Sunnyside, 1983)
Isotope (Criss Cross, 1983)
Everything Happens to Me (Timeless, 1983) with Chet Baker
Shorter by Two (Sunnyside, 1983) with Harold Danko
Lightsey 2 (Sunnyside, 1984)
Lightsey Live (Sunnyside, 1985)
First Affairs (Limetree, 1986)
Everything Is Changed (Sunnyside, 1986)
Kirk 'n Marcus (Criss Cross, 1986) with Marcus Belgrave
From Kirk to Nat (Criss Cross, 1990)
Temptation (Bellaphon, 1990)
Goodbye Mr. Evans (Evidence, 1994)
The Nights of Bradley's (Sunnyside, 1984 [2004])
Estate (Itinera, 2007)
Lightsey to Gladden (Criss Cross, 2008)
Solo Piano en Argentina (Rivorecords, 2013)
Le Corbu (Unit records, 2015)
Quotes from the New York Times
“An 82 year old pianist with a diaphanous harmonic sensibility and a redoubtable résumé (he toured and/or recorded with Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker and Woody Shaw, among countless others)