L.A Steel

IT WAS THE LATE FALL OF 2019, and Cameron Graves took the stage at the Blue Note in New York City looking ready for business—in a doom-metal band. He wore a biker-like vest revealing the colorful tattoos on his upper arms; his long, tightly curled hair was tied in the back, falling to his shoulders like the tail of a black comet. But Graves was here with the Stanley Clarke Band, playing electric keyboards in the bassist’s powerhouse sextet. And it is a vital role, at once anchoring and dynamic, as Clarke showed when he introduced Graves as a featured soloist in a turbulent extension of Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus.”

For the next 20 minutes, Graves—best known as the pianist in the West Coast Get Down, the Los Angeles progressive-jazz collective that jumped to acclaim in 2015 on saxophonist Kamasi Washington’s triple-disc landmark, The Epic—unleashed a kaleidoscopic attack with roots in fusion, R&B, and hard rock. He addressed Henderson’s melody with sprightly poise, wrapped Clarke’s muscular stride in circular-staircase figures, and hit off-center chords with brass-knuckle force. As the band hurtled to the finish, Graves laid a cool-ballad rapture against the racing pulse, then detonated a frenzied series of Latin-ized runs. And he did it all with delighted aplomb, chewing on what seemed like a giant gumball as light bounced off the sparkling stud in his chin.

“The music I love to write most is metal—the lines, the drops, the sections. I took that philosophy and applied it to jazz.”