Ben LaMar Gay

Chicago cornetist Ben LaMar Gay is one of the city’s most adventurous and boundary-pushing performers, with sound that touches upon avant-garde jazz, hip-hop, indie rock, Brazilian traditions, and experimental electronic composition.

A member of the AACM, Gay (who also spent time traveling and living in Brazil) emerged in the 2000s singing and playing a variety of instruments. He was a core component on Makaya McCraven’s Highly Rare and a cornet cameo on Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die, both of which releases were included in the New York Times’s “Best Albums of 2017”. Suffice it to say, Ben LaMar Gay is nearly omnipresent in the current zeitgeist of progressive jazz sounds sprouting from Chicago.

“There is no one universe for Ben LaMar Gay, he just sonic booms from one sound to another. His solo debut, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun, moves from fuzz-caked weirdo-psych to mutant synth-funk to giddy electronics to progressive jazz at a seamless, whiplash-free warp speed.” – NPR

“Downtown Castles Can Never Block The Sun” by Ben LaMar Gay Bandcamp