A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Charles Lloyd (b. March 15, 1938): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, music theorist, producer, and teacher
Saxophonist Charles Lloyd
is a forward-thinking musician whose supreme improvisational talents
and interest in cross-pollinating jazz with rock as well as non-Western
styles of music established him as one of the key figures in the
development of fusion and world music. Albums like Love In (1966), Forest Flower (1967), and In the Soviet Union
(1970) were so successful in showcasing his warm, accessible playing
style on tenor saxophone and flute that for a time he enjoyed the
benefits and curses of the life of a rock star, playing sold-out dates
across the world. The pressure left him feeling spiritually empty, and
he left the music scene for a decade to follow a solitary path. After
returning in 1981, Lloyd
became one of jazz's elder statesmen, creating a body of work that
reflects the influence of his forbears and collaborators. He has
continued to work at a near-prolific pace with various ensembles that
showcase different aspects of his musical persona, from his Sangam trio with Eric Harland and Zakir Hussain to his longtime quartet and all-star fusion outfit the Marvels with guitarists Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 15, 1938, Lloyd grew up surrounded by the vibrant blues and jazz scenes of his native city. Given a saxophone at age nine, Lloyd eventually studied with Memphis' legendary pianist Phineas Newborn, as well as saxophonist Irvin Reason. By his teens, Lloyd was not only best friends with schoolmate and trumpeter Booker Little, but was also gigging locally with such artists as saxophonist George Coleman and future blues icons including Bobby "Blue" Bland, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, and others.
In 1956, Lloyd
left Memphis and enrolled at the University of Southern California to
study classical music, ultimately earning his Master's degree in music.
During this time, he performed around Los Angeles with a veritable
who's-who of avant-garde jazz including saxophonist Ornette Coleman, saxophonist Eric Dolphy, and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. Also during this time, Lloyd became a working member of Gerald Wilson's big band. In 1960, Lloyd joined drummer Chico Hamilton's ensemble as musical director, replacing Dolphy, who had left to play with bassist Charles Mingus. During his time with Hamilton, Lloyd was responsible for writing and arranging much of the music in the band and recorded several albums with Hamilton, including 1962's Transfusion, 1963's A Different Kind of Journey, 1963's A Man from Two Worlds, and 1963's Passin' Thru.
By the mid-'60s, Lloyd
had developed into a highly adept writer/arranger, as well as a
virtuoso improviser, and regular sojourns to New York City brought him
into contact with such luminaries as saxophonist John Coltrane, trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Mingus, and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, whose group he joined in 1964. Also during this time, Lloyd began recording as a leader and released several albums, including 1965's Discovery! The Charles Lloyd Quartet and 1965's Of Course, Of Course. Lloyd continued recording as a leader after he left Adderley in 1965 and formed his own quartet, which featured future Miles Davis alum pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and bassist Cecil McBee. An extremely creative, intuitive, and adventurous ensemble, Lloyd's quartet released several exceptional albums during this time, including 1966's Dream Weaver, the 1966 live album Charles Lloyd in Europe, and 1966's Love-In.
However, this ensemble's appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1966, and the subsequent album Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey, are what truly caught the public's attention. An expansive, sophisticated, and genre-bending performance, Forest Flower found Lloyd
and his group in peak creative form, mixing his long-burgeoning
interest in Eastern music with modal and avant-garde jazz. The
performance was a highlight at the festival and the album was one of the
first jazz recordings to sell a million copies, gain heavy radio play,
and garner a wide crossover audience during a time when rock was quickly
superseding jazz in the popular mindset.
His success at Monterey buoyed Lloyd's
career, and he spent much of the late '60s sharing billing at such
famed rock venues as San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium alongside
artists like guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and the Grateful Dead. Such was Lloyd's
popularity that in 1967 he was voted Jazz Artist of the Year by Down
Beat and toured Europe, even playing in the U.S.S.R. during a time when
the government was discouraging jazz performances. Lloyd's
genre-bending jazz dovetailed perfectly with the free-thinking
experimentation of the late '60s, and although his music was based in
acoustic jazz, many artists took notice and went the extra step toward
electrifying jazz, most notably Miles Davis, whose 1969 classic Bitches Brew drew upon many of the same rock and world music influences that Lloyd had experimented with.
In the early '70s, with his career at its peak, Lloyd
underwent a spiritual crisis. He withdrew from the public eye and moved
to Big Sur to focus on what he described as an inner spiritual journey
and to practice meditation. He remained out of sight until 1981, when he
met the talented 18-year-old French pianist Michel Petrucciani. Inspired by Petrucciani's immense skill, Lloyd toured with the young pianist throughout the early '80s and released several albums, including the live Montreux (1982) and 1983's A Night in Copenhagen. In the late '80s, Lloyd formed a quartet with Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson and released several albums on ECM, including 1989's Fish Out of Water, 1991's Notes from Big Sur, and 1996's Canto.
His association with ECM continued throughout the next decade, a time of renewed public interest in Lloyd, and he built a steady body of work for the label, including 1999's Voice in the Night with guitarist John Abercrombie, 2000's The Water Is Wide with pianist Brad Mehldau. In August of 2001 Lloyd issued Hyperion with Higgins, an archival live date celebrating the memory of drummer Billy Higgins, who had passed in May. His 2002 album Lift Every Voice
was scheduled to be recorded on the night of September 11, 2001 at New
York City's Blue Note club. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, it was
delayed until February when Lloyd, with pianist Geri Allen, drummer Billy Hart, guitarist John Abercrombie, and bassists Marc Johnson and Larry Grenadier
played two gigs; their material drew from public-domain spirituals,
pop/rock songs, R&B tunes, and folk songs, Ellingtonia, and original
compositions. The band's collective goal was to illustrate the power of
music to provide empathy, compassion, and solace in the face of
darkness. Lift Every Voice was issued in October, and has since become one of the saxophonist's most beloved albums. In 2004, Lloyd released Which Way Is East, a collection of duets recorded with Higgins in the months before he died -- they constitute his final recordings. In 2006, Lloyd released the live album Sangam, featuring Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain. Two years later he returned with another live album, Rabo de Nube, this time with pianist Jason Moran. In 2010, Lloyd released Mirror, his 13th album for ECM, once again featuring Moran along with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. The live album Athens Concert, featuring vocalist Maria Farantouri, followed in 2011. Lloyd continued touring for most of 2012. His next studio effort was a duet offering with pianist Jason Moran entitled Hagar's Song,
which was issued in February of 2013. The same year, the saxophonist
was commissioned to write and perform a work for Poland's Jazztopad
Festival in Wrocław. The festival also screened Arrows Into Infinity, a
documentary that looked at Lloyd's life and career. It was directed by Jeffrey Morse and his life partner, manager, and co-producer Dorothy Darr. The film made the festival and theater circuit before being released on disc by ECM in 2014.
After a nearly three-decade tenure with ECM, Lloyd re-signed to Blue Note in early 2015. His debut for the label, Wild Man Dance, had been commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival two years earlier. His band on the date included pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, with guest appearances from Greek lyra player Sokratis Sinopoulos and Hungarian cimbalom master Miklós Lukács. Wild Man Dance was released in April.
For his second Blue Note release, Lloyd had intended to use a 2013 concert recording made at UCLA's Royce Hall featuring guitarist Bill Frisell. However, producer Darr convinced him to re-enter the studio with Frisell instead. Along with drummer Harland, guitarist Greg Leisz, and bassist Reuben Rogers, they cut a set of traditional and folk tunes, and re-recorded some of Lloyd's
earlier compositions, including "Of Course, Of Course," which was
issued as a pre-release single. There were two guest vocal appearances: Norah Jones assisted on the pop nugget "You Are So Beautiful" and Willie Nelson lent his voice to a reading of Ed McCurdy's "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream." Attributed to Charles Lloyd & the Marvels, the finished album was titled I Long to See You and was released in early 2015.
The saxophonist celebrated the tenth anniversary of his New Quartet with Moran, Rogers and Harland, with Passin' Thru
in the summer of 2017. The live offering featured compositions from
across his long career including the title track which made its first
recorded appearance in 1963 when he was a member of Hamilton's
quintet. It also featured a new version of "Dream Weaver," the title of
his first quartet's debut album in 1966.
Lloyd reconvened the Marvels for 2018's Vanished Gardens on Blue Note that also featured special guest Lucinda Williams. The singer/songwriter, who had worked with Leisz and Frisell before, met Lloyd backstage at a Marvels
concert. The pair got along well, and before long, she invited him to
open one of her own shows. He returned the favor, and the pair decided
to work together. Vanished Gardens, co-produced by Darr and Don Was, features Williams on four revisioned versions of originals from her catalog as well as a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel." The rest of the album comprises three tracks tunes by Lloyd, Thelonious Monk's "Monk's Mood," and the standard "Ballad of the Sad Young Men." In the aftermath of the album's release in June, the Marvels and Williams embarked on a nationwide tour for the rest of the calendar year.
The saxophonist celebrated his 80th birthday on
March 15, 2018 at his hometown venue, Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre,
accompanied by guitarist Julian Lage, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland. also on the scene for the occasion were organist Booker T. Jones and bassist (and Blue Note president) Don Was. They joined the ensemble midway through. A document of that event simply entitled 8: Kindred Spirits (Live from The Lobero), was issued by Blue Note Records in February of 2020.
Charles Lloyd, now a venerated jazz elder, continues to draw connections between modernity and “the wisdom of the ancients.”Credit...Richard Perry/The New York Times
The
jazz eminence Charles Lloyd has been many things since his rocketlike
emergence in the 1960s: a breakout talent, a phenomenon, a recluse, a
searcher, a rumor. On April 20 Mr. Lloyd, a tenor saxophonist and
flutist, will be inducted as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz
Master, the most prestigious honor for living jazz musicians. Still
there persists something of the outsider about him, not least in his own
mind.
“In some ways I feel that I’ve
been misunderstood or overlooked,” he said last month, as morning light
filled his glass-walled room at the Standard Hotel on the High Line.
“And yet how could you say that, when you seem to have had some success?
That’s all relative. One man’s roof is another man’s floor.”
Hours
earlier Mr. Lloyd had been onstage at the Village Vanguard, exuding a
kingly poise. For the club’s 80th anniversary, the pianist Jason Moran
had arranged a week of special programming — saving the grand finale for
the band Mr. Lloyd calls his New Quartet. The performance was a casual
astonishment of postbop fire, bluesy crosstalk and lucid incantation for
a crowd aware of its privilege. It was Mr. Lloyd’s 77th birthday, and
his first gig at the Vanguard in more than 40 years.
He
has lived on the California coast for almost all of that time, since
his dramatic withdrawal from superstardom in search of solitude,
sobriety and clarity. His return to active circulation, chronicled over
the last 25 years by the ECM label, has unfolded on his own unhurried
terms. Especially since the 2007 formation of the New Quartet, with Mr.
Moran, the drummer Eric Harland and the bassist Reuben Rogers, he has
earned the reputation of an elder with his thoughts trained inward and
upward.
He’ll make his next New York appearance in the Sackler Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, home to the Temple of Dendur. As he did
in the same cavernous space two years ago, Mr. Lloyd will lead his
quartet alongside musicians rooted in modes of antiquity: in this case,
Sokratis Sinopoulos, who plays the politiki lyra, a bowed lute, and
Miklos Lukacs, on Hungarian cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer. The concert
will be the North American premiere of Mr. Lloyd’s “Wild Man Dance
Suite,” a searching, ecstatic piece that takes up the entirety of his
new album, out Tuesday on Blue Note.
The
album, “Wild Man Dance,” reflects the compulsion to draw connections
— between cultural ideals, between stylistic traditions, between
modernity and what he calls “the wisdom of the ancients” — that has long
been a priority for Mr. Lloyd. He’s a pursuer of the universal, and a
charismatic embodiment of his own utopian convictions. At the height of
his fame, this made him an effective jazz emissary to the psychedelic
counterculture. It can still make his music feel lighted with a larger
purpose.
“We’ve played around the
world,” Mr. Moran said, “and people salivate when they see Charles walk
onstage. He’s regal. He plays with a lot of romance. But then he also
plays with a lot of earthworm-in-the-soil intensity, too. He’s always
finding these pathways.”
Mr.
Lloyd, who surfaced at the Village Vanguard in a gray sports jacket, a
fedora, a knotted scarf and his round architect glasses, still carries
his tall frame with a watchful dignity. Sitting in his hotel room, on a
couch overlooking the Hudson River, he spoke in an amiable gush,
foraging often in the realm of aphorism, parable and metaphor.
“My
music, it breathes,” he said. “It’s the mysticism of sound. I’m a sound
seeker, and I’m enthralled with it, by what it can do to change the
molecules and uplift people. They feel something when we play. I can’t
take authorship for that. I can take that I’m in service.”
Mr. Lloyd’s fans
are familiar with his enlightenment agenda; his recent concerts have
included recitations from the Bhagavad Gita. He now lives in a rustic
villa designed by his wife and manager, the artist Dorothy Darr, in the
mountains east of Santa Barbara. Remote in most respects, it’s less than
a 10-minute walk from his local Vedanta temple.
“I
was a philosopher as a very young kid,” he said, recalling long hours
spent wandering the orchards of his grandfather’s farm in Mississippi.
He heard his earliest Delta blues then, played by a farm foreman, a
moment he describes like a spark of ignition.
At
Manassas High School in Memphis, one of his classmates was the
trumpeter Booker Little, with whom he recalls studying Bartok string
quartets in the school library. “We were under the influence of Phineas
Newborn and his harmonic genius,” Mr. Lloyd said, referring to a
still-underrated piano virtuoso whom he regarded as a guru.
From
left, Jason Moran and Charles Lloyd performing at the Village Vanguard
on March 15, part of the club’s 80th anniversary series. Credit: Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times
The
tenor saxophonist George Coleman, who was a few years ahead of Mr.
Lloyd at Manassas, also happens to be in this year’s class of National
Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters. “We all played a lot,” Mr. Coleman
said. “That was a good thing about Memphis during that time. We weren’t
making any money, but we had the experience of being involved in jazz
almost 24 hours a day.”
Another
Memphis hallmark was a busy dialogue between jazz and rhythm and blues.
Mr. Newborn had played in a trailblazing R&B rhythm section, around
the dawn of rock ’n’ roll. Mr. Lloyd worked as a teenager with bluesmen
like Howlin’ Wolf and B. B. King. His distaste for what he often calls
“lines of demarcation” can be partly traced to this time.
Partly, too, it
dates to Mr. Lloyd’s experience of the 1960s, which began with several
years as musical director and composer for the Chico Hamilton Quintet, a
coolly chamberlike group that also featured the Hungarian guitarist
Gabor Szabo. Mr. Lloyd moved into a Greenwich Village loft and fell into
bohemian rhythm, associating with painters and poets as well as the
likes of Bob Dylan.
His style on tenor
suggested an extrapolation of elements: the bark and brio of Sonny
Rollins; the phrasing and spiritual inquest of John Coltrane; the
weightless, susurrating style of an older giant on the instrument,
Lester Young. But he was also working with fundamentals from the Delta,
and with the stirrings of the time.
His
first great quartet, with the pianist Keith Jarrett, the bassist Cecil
McBee and the drummer Jack DeJohnette, released its debut album, “Dream
Weaver,” on Atlantic in 1966. Later that year, the band made a
triumphant appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Released as the album “Forest Flower,” it sold more than a million copies.
“That
group came together at a time when the socioeconomic and political
environment of this country was opening up,” Mr. DeJohnette said. “And
we had a vibe. We could play grooves or we could play abstract. Nothing
was ever done the same way twice.”
Mr.
Lloyd’s quartet became a fixture at the Fillmore Auditorium, sharing
the bill with acts like Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin. “I always
saw him as the lead vocalist in a rock ’n’ roll band,” said the record
producer Don Was, who as president of Blue Note made it a mission to
sign Mr. Lloyd. “He seemed to be the first guy from the jazz idiom who,
on a sociological level, had some connection to where the Grateful Dead
were coming from.”
But what endeared
Mr. Lloyd to the Fillmore crowd had the inverse effect on some in the
jazz establishment. Though DownBeat magazine anointed him “Jazzman of
the Year” in 1967, the influential critic Martin Williams sniffed in The
New York Times that “with wildly bushy hair, military jacket, and
garishly striped bell bottoms, he looks like a kind of show-biz hippie.”
Like Miles Davis around this time, Mr. Lloyd was charged with
crassness; unlike Mr. Davis, he also faced suggestions of charlatanism.
The
bigger problem, as Mr. Lloyd remembers it, was that he began to feel
like a commodity. “I would also medicate myself,” he said. “I was
getting off my spiritual moorings.” He moved to Big Sur, and spent most
of the next decade making music in idiosyncratic bursts — with Beat
poets, or members of the Beach Boys.
He
was coaxed out of retirement by the French pianist Michel Petrucciani,
who had made a pilgrimage to see him in the early 1980s. But Mr. Lloyd
didn’t resume his career in earnest until after a brush with death,
because of a rare intestinal disorder, in 1986.
His
sound had become softer and more luminous, though he plays down the
idea of a reinvention: “I’m big on tenderness sutras,” he said. “Even
during the obstreperousness of the ’60s, and the so-called yelling and
screaming on the horn, I was always a lyricist.”
The
body of work he amassed on ECM spans a small constellation of
ensembles, including the devotional, shape-shifting trio known as
Sangam, with Zakir Hussain on tabla and Mr. Harland on drums and piano.
Mr. Moran said that while he grew up with “Forest Flower,” it was a
concert by Sangam a decade ago that drew him to Mr. Lloyd.
The New Quartet
has had a similar effect out in the world. The pianist Gerald Clayton,
who appears on “Wild Man Dance,” recalls being awed by the band several
times in concert; his point of entry to Mr. Lloyd’s gifts as a
bandleader had virtually nothing to do with the 1960s. “The point is to
almost be child-minded,” Mr. Clayton said, “like you’re discovering
music for the first time, every time you play. Then it’s a really
peculiar feeling afterward, different than I get from stretching out
with guys my own age.”
Mr. Lloyd
offered his explanation for that. “They all do something else with their
own stuff,” he said of the musicians in his fold, chuckling, “but when
they come here, there are other deities who are operating.” Suddenly he
was choked up, tears welling in his eyes. “And every night you have to
mean all of that. And it has a vibration that keeps me humble, and
wanting another chance to tell the truth.”
A version of this article appears in print on , Section AR, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Zen Knight-Philosopher, Questing Still. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
For more than 60 years saxophonist Charles Lloyd
has loomed large over the music world with both his presence and his
occasional absence. Lloyd was born in in 1938 in Memphis, Tennessee,
where he apprenticed with jazz and blues legends including Phineas
Newborn, Howlin’ Wolf, and B.B. King. While attending the University of
Southern California in the late-1950s, Lloyd performed with prominent
artists on the Los Angeles jazz scene including Ornette Coleman, Eric
Dolphy, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Gerald Wilson. In 1960, Lloyd
became the music director in the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and later
joined the Cannonball Adderley Sextet for a two-year stint before
leaving to focus on his own career as a leader. Lloyd signed with Columbia and released his debut album Discovery!
in 1964. In 1965 he formed his first great Quartet with a young pianist
named Keith Jarrett along with bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jack
DeJohnette. The Quartet’s first album Dream Weaver for Atlantic was followed by Forest Flower: Live at Monterey
in 1967, a wildly successful album that became one of the first
million-sellers in jazz and catapulted Lloyd to international fame. The Quartet went on to perform at rock festivals and venues like the
Fillmore in San Francisco where they co-headlined bills with Jimi
Hendrix and Janis Joplin, while Lloyd also collaborated with the likes
of the Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, and The Doors. Then at the peak of his
popularity he unexpectedly and voluntarily decided to leave the music
world and disappeared to a Big Sur retreat for most of the 1970s. He
stopped touring and would play saxophone for the trees and occasionally
collaborate with poets and authors like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Ken
Kesey. Lloyd re-emerged briefly in the early 1980s to help the French
pianist Michel Petrucciani begin his career, releasing a single album
for Blue Note featuring Petrucciani (A Night In Copenhagen)
before disappearing again until 1989 when he began a fruitful 25-year
relationship with ECM Records. Lloyd’s 16 albums for ECM re-established
the saxophonist as one of the leading creative voices in jazz, and found
him collaborating with artists including Bobo Stenson, John
Abercrombie, Billy Higgins, Brad Mehldau, Geri Allen, and Zakir Hussain,
and forming his acclaimed New Quartet with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers,
and Eric Harland. When Don Was became head of Blue Note in 2011, he invited Lloyd to
record for the label. Lloyd ultimately accepted the invitation, with a
mission in mind: “I want to stretch my wings wider and find new thermals
to soar on. It is all a continuation of my search and service in
sound.” Lloyd’s 2015 Blue Note release Wild Man Dance
was an album-length suite composed for a unique group comprised of
pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Joe Sanders, drummer Gerald Cleaver,
Greek lyra virtuoso Sokratis Sinopoulos, and Hungarian cimbalom maestro
Miklós Lukács. For his 2016 album I Long to See You,
Lloyd formed a new band called The Marvels featuring guitarist Bill
Frisell and pedal steel guitarist Greg Leisz along with Rogers and
Harland. In 2017, Lloyd released Passin’ Thru, a passionate live recording that marked the 10th anniversary of the New Quartet and prompted the Los Angeles Times
to declare him “an artist with a focus still firmly fixed forward.
Lloyd sounds as if he’s just getting started.” In 2018, Lloyd reconvened
The Marvels with the addition of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams for
Vanished Gardens,
a transcendent collaboration that wove together several threads of
American music (Jazz, Blues, Americana, Country, and Rock) into a
thrilling and uplifting new musical hybrid. The 2020 album 8: Kindred Spirits (Live from The Lobero)
documented his magnificent 80th birthday concert with Clayton, Rogers,
Harland, guitarist Julian Lage, and special guests organist Booker T.
Jones and bassist Don Was. Lloyd’s life story was powerfully told in the 2014 documentary Arrows Into Infinity.
He was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2015, and received an honorary
Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music. In 2016, Lloyd was
inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, and The Atlantic published the profile “The Re-Flowering: Charles Lloyd’s Second Golden Age,”
proffering that “The jazz saxophonist went from 1960s pop stardom to
years of self-imposed exile, but he’s now producing some of the best
music of his career.”
When Charles Lloyd was 22, he quit a stable job teaching school in Los
Angeles, dropped out of graduate school, and came to New York to try to
make it as a working musician. Lloyd sometimes went to see the tenor
saxophonist Coleman Hawkins playing at the Village Vanguard, which was
then, as now, the center of the jazz world. After a set, Lloyd could
make his way through the dimly lit halls of the club, past the men’s
room, to the dressing room, where Hawkins would be sitting and sipping
scotch. The younger musician viewed the older man as a guru, a deity.
But
Hawkins was an ailing god. Though he was barely in his mid-fifties
then, Hawk’s salad days—his glorious tenure with Fletcher Henderson, his
epochal recording of “Body and Soul”—were past him. Within a few years,
he would be dead at 64, a casualty of too many scotches. Hawkins
sounded beautiful but looked rough.
“I said to myself,
this is a young man’s music,” Lloyd recalled. “I said, I hope that I
won't have a saxophone in my mouth when I get that age.”
When
Lloyd told me this story this spring, he did so fully aware of the
irony of that earlier statement. Once a young man in a hurry in the jazz
world, Lloyd now finds himself an old man with a saxophone still in his
mouth. At 78, he has a patience and openness and discipline rare in a
human being of any age; he is also, at the moment, in the midst of a
quiet late-career renaissance. Earlier this year, he released I Long to See You, a collaboration with younger musicians that is one of 2016’s best jazz releases. (Lloyd is touring in support of that record this week and in the spring.) That follows on his equally, but very differently, outstanding 2015 record Wild Man Dance.
The first is a restrained, outwardly mellow collection, while the
second is a searching, swinging plaintive expedition. Together, they
suggest that this music—jazz, avant-garde, whatever you call it—is very
much an old man’s game, too.
Early years
Charles Lloyd at Russian River Jazz Festival, Guerneville, California, 1981
In 1960 Lloyd was invited to become music director of Chico Hamilton's group when Eric Dolphy left to join Charles Mingus's band. The Hungarian guitarist Gábor Szabó, bassist Albert "Sparky" Stinson, and trombonist Charles Bohanan soon joined Lloyd in the band. Hamilton's albums on Impulse!, Passin' Thru and Man from Two Worlds, featured music arranged and written almost entirely by Lloyd. He collaborated with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji, with whom he played when he wasn't on the road with Hamilton. He joined the Cannonball Adderley Sextet in 1964, and performed with Nat Adderley, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. For two years he remained with Cannonball Adderley, whom he credits in his own development as a leader.
In 1964 Lloyd signed with CBS Records and began to record as a leader. His Columbia recordings, Discovery! (1964), and Of Course, Of Course
(1965), featured Roy Haynes and Tony Williams on drums, Richard Davis
and Ron Carter on bass, Gabor Szabo on guitar and Don Friedman on piano,
and led to his being voted Down Beat magazine's "New Star." He was also one of the well known and notable supporting musicians of The Beach Boys Live Performances. Of Course, Of Course was reissued on Mosaic Records in 2006.
Quartet
In New York in 1966, Lloyd formed a quartet with drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Cecil McBee. Their 1966 album Forest Flower
was one of the most successful jazz recordings of the mid-1960s,
building an audience of rock as well as jazz fans. The Quartet toured
across America and Europe. In 1967 Lloyd was voted "Jazz Artist of the
Year" by DownBeat magazine.[1] Lloyd is given credit for anticipating world music
by incorporating music from other cultures into his compositions, as
early as the late 1950s. He describes his music as having "danced on
many shores".[2]
Peter Watrous stated, "Lloyd has come up with a strange and beautiful
distillation of the American experience, part abandoned and wild, part
immensely controlled and sophisticated."[3] Despite recording several albums during the 1970s and
occasionally appearing as a sideman, he practically disappeared from the
jazz scene. During the 1970s Lloyd played extensively with the Beach
Boys both on their studio recordings and as a member of their touring
band. He was a member of Celebration, a band composed of members of the Beach Boys' touring band as well as Mike Love and Al Jardine. Celebration released two albums.[4][5] Lloyd returned to the jazz world in 1981 when he toured with Michel Petrucciani. British jazz critic Brian Case called Lloyd's return "one of the events of the 1980s."[6] The group produced a special edition cassette, Night Blooming Jasmine, and two live records, Montreux 82 and A Night in Copenhagen, which also features Bobby McFerrin. After the tour, Lloyd again retreated to Big Sur.
In 1986, after being hospitalized with a nearly fatal medical
condition, Lloyd rededicated himself to music. When he regained his
strength in 1988 he formed a new quartet with Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson. When Lloyd returned to the Montreux Festival
in 1988, Swiss critic Yvan Ischer wrote: "To see and hear Charles Lloyd
in concert is always an event, not only because this saxophonist has
been at quite a few crossroads, but also because he seems to hold an
impalpable truth which makes him a thoroughly original musician...This
is what we call grace."[2]
Recording for ECM
In 1989 Lloyd made his first recording for ECM Records, Fish Out of Water. Manfred Eicher, ECM's founder and producer, compared the recording to a Giacometti
painting, saying, "I really believe this is the refined essence of what
music should be. All the meat is gone, only the bones remain."[6] From 1989, Lloyd toured and recorded for ECM. Noteworthy albums include Canto, Voice in the Night, The Water Is Wide (featuring Brad Mehldau, John Abercrombie, Larry Grenadier and Billy Higgins), Lift Every Voice (featuring Geri Allen), and the live Rabo de Nube (with Jason Moran).
Lloyd's albums for ECM contain elements of world music and experimentation, as in the duets on Which Way Is East with his longtime friend, Billy Higgins.[7][8][9] Mirror, his second recording with the New Quartet (2010), has been called a "Charles Lloyd classic." Rabo de Nube, also on ECM, captured the quartet "live" at its inception, and was voted No. 1 recording for the 2008 JazzTimes Reader's and Critic's Poll.[10] Lloyd collaborated with the classical Greek singer, Maria Farantouri, for a concert at the Herodion Theater at the Acropolis. Ta Nea,
a newspaper in Athens, stated "Music has no borders...The audience was
filled with a Dionysian ecstasy. While the music had reminiscences of a
Hypiros fair, at the same time it took you to the heart of New York
City."[6] This concert was recorded and Athens Concert was released by ECM in 2011.[11] Lloyd celebrated his 75th birthday in 2013 with concerts in the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.[12][13] On June 25, 2014 it was announced that Lloyd will receive the NEA Jazz Masters Award 2015.[14] Lloyd was the Honoree at the 2014 Monterey Jazz Festival Jazz Legends Gala, hosted by Herbie Hancock.[15] Lloyd was the recipient of the 2014 Alfa Jazz Fest International Music Award.[16] In January 2015, it was announced that Lloyd had signed with Blue Note Records. Wild Man Dance, a live recording of a long-form suite commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, was released in April 2015.[17] Lloyd was presented with an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Berklee College of Music in a ceremony at the Umbria Jazz Festival in July 2015.[18] In 2016, Lloyd was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.[19]
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Charles Lloyd.
"I've been drunk with music
all my life," Charles Lloyd muses, "and it's been my spiritual path.
And the times that I was knocked off my mooring, I just found a way to
get back up." Lloyd, a coolly venerable tenor
saxophonist, flutist and composer, has famously been here and gone and
back again. Fifty years ago, around the time he was named Jazzman of the
Year by DownBeat magazine, he abruptly dropped off the scene,
in search of equilibrium. He found it along the rugged California coast,
where he established a new life, full of healing and contemplation,
before rekindling his relationship with the spotlight He celebrated his 80th birthday this year — and released an acclaimed album, Vanished Gardens, featuring singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams with his band The Marvels. In this episode of Jazz Night in America, we'll get a taste of that collaboration, along with choice moments from Lloyd's recent appearances at Jazz at Lincoln Center. And we'll join Jazz Night
producer and writer Alex Ariff as he pays a visit to Lloyd's home and
sanctum in the mountains near Santa Barbara, Calif. We'll hear portions
of their conversation, as they sit on a bench near the ocean, touching
on ancestral legacies and present realities. "I'm an elder now," Lloyd
says almost tentatively, as if still making peace with the idea.
Video of NEA Jazz Masters: Tribute to Charles Lloyd
"This
is a music of freedom and wonder. It uplifts, it inspires, it touches
the heart, and it heals. It is transformational. Jazz is our indigenous
art form and is constantly evolving while remaining deeply rooted in
tradition and nourished by the American terroir. I have been drunk with
the pursuit of ‘the sound’ all my life – and have been blessed to stand
on the shoulders of those who came before me and gave encouragement –
this is also part of the tradition." Charles Lloyd’s fierce improvisational skills and interest in fusing
jazz with non-Western musical styles established him as one of the key
figures in the expansion and furthering of the art form. Whether playing
standards, avant-garde, or world music, Lloyd’s emotional, elegant
playing spurs on his fellow musicians. Lloyd began playing saxophone at the age of nine, mentored by pianist
Phineas Newborn. He took saxophone lessons from Irvin Reason and
composition studies with Willie Mitchell. His interest in jazz was
cultivated by listening to the radio broadcasts featuring the likes of
Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, and Duke Ellington. As a
teenager, he immersed himself in the local Memphis music scene, playing
with George Coleman, Booker Little, Harold Mabern, and Frank Strozier, and as a sideman for Johnny Ace, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Howlin’ Wolf, and B.B. King (an NEA National Heritage Fellow). In 1956, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles and graduated from the University
of Southern California. During this period, Lloyd played in Gerald Wilson’s big band while also playing in local clubs with Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Billy Higgins, Scott La Faro, and Bobby Hutcherson. Lloyd joined Chico Hamilton’s band in 1960 as the ensemble’s music director and main composer. In 1964, Lloyd left Hamilton's group to join alto saxophonist
Cannonball Adderley, while also securing a deal on Columbia to record
his own work. By 1965 he had left Adderley to form his own quartet,
featuring pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and bassist Cecil McBee. Their recording Forest Flower: Live at Monterey in
1966 became one of the first jazz recordings to sell a million copies,
and popularized the group in the rock world as well. Lloyd’s quartet
made headlines in 1967 when they played in the Soviet Union at the
invitation of a group of Soviet jazz writers, finally performing after
several days of bureaucratic back-and-forth with government officials. In 1969, at the peak of his career, Lloyd disbanded the quartet and
moved back to Big Sur, California, to focus on his inner life and
spiritual quest. From 1981-88, Lloyd performed intermittently, until he
resumed touring activities and began recording with the ECM label in
1989. He continues to experiment with his music in terms of instruments,
musical sources, and collaborations, such as his Sangam Trio featuring Zakir Hussain
(another NEA National Heritage Fellow) and his concert with the
classical Greek singer Maria Farantouri in 2010. Awards bestowed on the
artist include a “Brass Note” on Beale Street in Memphis in 2012, an
Award of Merit from the city of Tallinn, Estonia, and the Miles Davis Award from the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal, Canada,
both in 2013, and the Alfa Jazz Fest International Music Award in 2014. Selected Discography: Chico Hamilton, Man from Two Worlds, Impulse!, 1962-63Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey, Atlantic, 1966Montreux, Elektra, 1982 The Water Is Wide, ECM, 1999
Charles Lloyd/Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song, ECM, 2012
Charles Lloyd Revels in the Flow on a Stellar Live Album
“8:
Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero),” recorded on the saxophonist’s
80th birthday in 2018, unites longtime collaborators and first-time
musical partners.
Charles Lloyd recorded 12 pieces over two hours before an audience for the album “8: Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero).” Credit: Nicole Fara Silver for The New York Times
Nearing
his 80th birthday in March 2018, the tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd
wanted to commemorate the occasion by revisiting old music with a new
band, mixing longtime collaborators and first-timers. He recorded 12
pieces over two hours in a live performance on the night of his
birthday, at the Lobero Theater in his hometown, Santa Barbara, Calif.,
and it has now been turned into an enchanting new album, “8: Kindred
Spirits (Live From the Lobero).”
The personnel tells its own story; it hints at Mr. Lloyd’s willful urge to subvert
while also making sense of things, to prove something about the oneness
of the world. Both the oldest and the youngest of the five side
musicians are new to his orbit: the organist Booker T. Jones, now 75
— a fellow Memphis native who, like Mr. Lloyd, went on to become a
crossover star — and the guitarist Julian Lage, 32. They join the
bassist Rueben Rogers, the drummer Eric Harland and the pianist Gerald
Clayton, all members of Mr. Lloyd’s other ensembles. (Don Was, the
president of Blue Note Records, also played bass on two tunes.)
In
the late 1960s, when he became a popular sensation, Mr. Lloyd was among
the few who saw jazz’s popular decline and rock ’n’ roll’s ascent not
as conflicting forces, but as waves already in flow together. The bands
of Cannonball Adderley and Chico Hamilton, in which he got his start,
were good places to explore this kind of thinking. So was California,
where he moved at the end of the decade, by which point he was already in touch with the hippie movement.
He proved adept at allaying questions of
style while basically avoiding the conversation entirely, so he never
came to symbolize any particular turn. The most obvious way to group him
would be in a jazz-rock fusion conversation (he had a band with Mike
Love, you know), but even that never made enough sense to stick. If his
tunes can sometimes feel like a species of their own, it’s because they
so confidently allow you to feel the blues while hearing jazz and
listening like you would to pop music.
“8: Kindred Spirits (Live at the Lobero)” was recorded in March 2018.
“8:
Kindred Spirits,” named in reference to Mr. Lloyd’s eight decades on
Earth, begins with a 20-minute journey through “Dream Weaver,” his
crossover hit from the mid-1960s. For the first five minutes, the band
plays the equivalent of an abstract overture, throwing sounds around —
Mr. Clayton’s jangling ostinatos; Mr. Lage’s bright, streaky lines; Mr.
Lloyd’s restless, wriggling tenor — without coming together.
At
5:00, with the band cooling to a simmer, Mr. Lloyd repeats a low,
downward phrase three times, pulling the curtain down. The sounds have
almost died out when he raises himself up to puff out the opening phrase
of “Dream Weaver”: a simple, singsong melody, all about rhythm and
tone. The band falls in behind him, grooving now, but the feeling of
scattered friction that it established in the overture still reigns.
When
you approach rhythm and feel sideways, as Mr. Lloyd does, it presents a
dilemma for everyone else. Should a drummer offer a sturdy baseline
underneath him, or would it be wiser to match the leader’s protean
improvising with a dance of cymbal flutters and toms? Maybe there’s a
third way: wrap and wriggle around him; keep the beat strong but still
responsive; follow the elusive spirit of Mr. Lloyd’s playing without
trying to mirror it.
Mr. Harland has
become a master at this. He has patter and stutter and groove all tied
together in his drumming, and he shares Mr. Lloyd’s relationship to
rhythm: always ahead, never rushing. It serves him well even on Mr.
Jones’s composition “Green Onions,” which gets a blissful Lloydification here.
Mr.
Lloyd has talked about identifying with his star sign (Pisces), and the
importance of waterways to his life. When you hear him, you get it: His
saxophone is too light to feel like a solid substance, but too
graspable to be vapor. It’s liquid, fast-moving and rerouting. Into it
he mixes the soul-opening honk of Albert Ayler, full of enough breath to
evoke a door blowing wide open; the winding intensity of John Coltrane;
and the troubled placidity of Lester Young. And somehow, he never seems
to need any more volume than Young did to get his point across. That
point being that it’s all wide open, one thing a part of the next, and
it all continues.
Charles Lloyd “8: Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero)” (Blue Note)
A version of this article appears in print on , Section C, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Reveling in the Flow on a Stellar Live Recording. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels: 80th Birthday Celebration
Featuring Bill Frisell and special guest Lucinda Williams
Charles Lloyd was only 29 years old when TIME magazine
noted one of his most distinguishing and enduring traits. It was 1967,
and Lloyd had just led the first jazz group ever to perform at San
Francisco’s counter-cultural hotspot, the Fillmore. “Though modern jazz
normally goes over with teens like a 9pm curfew,” TIME wrote, “Lloyd’s passionate attack holds them spellbound.” Lloyd—now celebrating his 80th
birthday with us in Rose Theater—is an NEA Jazz Master, saxophone
titan, bandleader, and composer with a rare crossover appeal. To this
day, he performs his soulful music with a fervor and emotional abandon
that connects with a diverse community of listeners. After establishing his jazz bona fides in the early 1960s as a key
member of Chico Hamilton and Cannonball Adderley’s groups, Lloyd formed
his historic quartet with Keith Jarrett, Cecil McBee, and Jack
DeJohnette, bringing improvised jazz to brand-new audiences and
recording one of the first jazz albums to sell a million copies. A
veritable rock star, Lloyd then shared bills and recording dates with
the Grateful Dead, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, and the Beach Boys,
and he now leads some of jazz’s most distinctive and celebrated small
groups. His current band, The Marvels, is the perfect vehicle for his stylistically varied and spiritually engaging music, and Jazzwise called their 2016 debut album “perhaps the finest of Lloyd’s career.” Featuring Lloyd’s longtime rhythm section of bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland, plus pedal steel guitar master Greg Leisz and singular six-stringer Bill Frisell,
The Marvels play new originals, Lloyd classics, and transformative
versions of American roots music, gospel, rock and pop hits, Mexican
folk songs, and much more. Joining them tonight is iconic vocalist and
songwriter Lucinda Williams, who has performed live
with The Marvels on a few special occasions and recently recorded an
acclaimed version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” with the band. Catch
them together in Rose Theater for an experience that has been bringing
music lovers together for half a century.
While Memphis may be better known for Stax than sax, jazz icon Charles Lloyd embodies the innovative and fearless nature that has defined Memphis music for decades. Whether playing avant-garde free jazz with his Quartet, ancient world music with Maria Farantouri, or 1960s psychedelia with the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, Mr. Lloyd has been a towering figure in jazz for nearly fifty years and remains one of America's most influential, experimental, and spiritual musicians.
While Memphis may be better known for Stax than
sax, jazz icon Charles Lloyd embodies the innovative and fearless nature
that has defined Memphis music for decades. Whether playing avant-garde
free jazz with his Quartet, ancient world music with Maria Farantouri,
or 1960s psychedelia with the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, Mr. Lloyd has been
a towering figure in jazz for nearly fifty years and remains one of
America's most influential, experimental, and spiritual musicians.
A Musical Mecca
Charles Lloyd was born in the Orange Mound
neighborhood of Memphis in 1938 and was almost immediately engulfed in
the city's burgeoning black music scene. "My mother had a large house,
and there wasn't an adequate hotel, so these musicians, they would stay.
I had so many questions, and they were all very kind to me." These
houseguests included jazz legends like Duke Ellington and Count Basie,
amongst others. Lloyd was also exposed to and influenced by the music of
Beale St. Already determined to make a life in music, Lloyd began
singing at Beale Street's famed amateur hours at the age of seven,
before deciding he "didn't have the voice that would make me swoon."
Luckily, Lloyd found a solution to his singing woes that would prove
life changing. "When I got a saxophone at the age of nine, it became my
voice. I wanted to sing on it."
Memphis had a rich intelligentsia of musicians who brought it always.
For the next several years, Lloyd was taught
and mentored by a veritable who's who of Memphis music legends,
including saxophone lessons from Irvin Reason and composition studies
from Willie Mitchell. His biggest influence by far, however, was piano
great Phineas Newborn, Jr.
"He was a master and he straightened me out, you know. He put me on the
path," Lloyd told Tavis Smiley in 2015. Lloyd also began playing with
some of Memphis' greatest blues musicians, including B.B. King, Howlin'
Wolf, and Bobby "Blue" Bland. At Manassas High School, Lloyd befriended
future jazz legends Booker Little and George Coleman, all of whom
studied under the program began by Jimmy Lunceford. "It was like Mecca,
you know, in those days for me. There were all these geniuses…Memphis
had a rich intelligentsia of musicians who brought it always."
California Dreamin'
In 1956, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles to
attend USC's school of music. While he studied classical music during
the day, he gigged at some of L.A.'s hottest clubs with avant-garde
luminaries like Ornette Coleman, Gerald Wilson, and Eric Dolphy. After
earning his master's degree, Lloyd joined drummer Chico Hamilton's
ensemble, where he acted as the group's musical director and main
composer. By the mid-1960s, Lloyd had earned a reputation as a saxophone
virtuoso and a highly skilled composer. He began rubbing shoulders with
jazz masters like Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and joined legendary
saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's band in 1964. At the same time, Lloyd
had been signed to Colombia Records and began producing his own music as
a leader, including the 1965 albums Disovery! The Charles Lloyd Quartet
and Of Course, Of Course.
I wanted to change the world with music as a
young man. Then I realized I wasn't doing that, so I decided I had
better go away and work on changing myself, which is a lifelong
endeavor.
The Charles Lloyd Quartet
After leaving Adderley's band later that
year, Lloyd formed his own quartet with pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer
Jack DeJohnette, and bassist Cecil McBee. An unbelievably capable and
daring ensemble, Lloyd's band electrified the music community in 1966
with remarkable albums like Dream Weaver, Love-In, and Charles Lloyd in
Europe. However, the quartet reached their artistic apex during a live
performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, which resulted in the seminal
album Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey. The performance
embodied everything that would come to define Lloyd's unique genius,
from the sophistication of the playing to the obvious influence of world
music in his compositions. Perhaps most importantly, the album had a
stunning crossover appeal that introduced Lloyd to millions of new fans
and helped Forest Flowers to sell a million copies. As drummer Jack
DeJohnette explained to the New York Times, "The group came together at a
time when the socioeconomic and political environment of this country
was opening up and we had a vibe. We could play grooves or we could play
abstract. Nothing was ever done the same way twice."
Riding a wave of popularity that was rare
for a jazz outfit during this time, the Charles Lloyd Quartet began
performing alongside rock n' roll giants like Jimi Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and the Beach Boys. The Quartet also proved
to be highly influential within the wider world of jazz, influencing
artists like Miles David to go electric in order to tap into the group's
diverse and eclectic fan base. In 1967, Lloyd was named Jazz Artist of
the Year by Downbeat Magazine and the group embarked on a world tour
throughout Europe, making headlines when they played for a crowd in the
U.S.S.R.
We could play grooves or we could play abstract. Nothing was ever done the same way twice.
In Search of Peace
Despite his massive success and popularity,
Lloyd has become disillusioned with the trappings of fame and began to
feel untethered from his "spiritual moorings." In response, Lloyd
decided to disband his ensemble in order to move to Big Sur to focus on
his spiritual well-being. "I wanted to change the world with music as a
young man. Then I realized I wasn't doing that, so I decided I had
better go away and work on changing myself, which is a lifelong
endeavor," he told the Union-Tribune. For much of the next two decades,
Charles Lloyd remained outside of the public spotlight, emerging
infrequently on recording with the Beach Boys and other West Coast
bohemians.
I realized I was really dedicated to this
indigenous art form, jazz, and wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to
it. I got back on the bus.
Creative Commons
A Triumphant Return
In the early 1980s, Charles Lloyd met the
virtuosic 18-year-old French pianist Michel Petrucciani, who eventually
coaxed Charles Lloyd from his semi-retirement. The duo toured the world
together for several years and released several heralded albums, which
British jazz critic Brian Case called "one of the events of the 1980s."
Now confident that Petrucciani had received
the recognition he deserved, Lloyd retreated back to the quietude of Big
Sur. However, a nearly fatal intestinal disorder suffered in 1986
prompted Lloyd to return to music. "I realized I was really dedicated to
this indigenous art form, jazz, and wanted to dedicate the rest of my
life to it. I got back on the bus," he said. In 1988, he formed a new
quartet with Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson and released his first album
with ECM Records, Fish Out of Water. The album would prove to be a
benchmark in Lloyd's career, helping to kick off a period of intense
creativity and innovation that continues to this day.
I'm interested in going deeper, and also in simplifying.
A Giant of Jazz
For the past two decades, Mr. Lloyd has
amassed a body of work that is truly staggering in both its boldness and
breadth and that continues to awaken illicit awe in his peers. A
life-long innovator, Lloyd's music remains as fresh and exciting as
ever, although he has learned a trick or two along the way. "Nuance
changes as you get older. You get wiser. Instead of playing a lot of
notes, you can express them in one sound. I'm interested in going
deeper, and also in simplifying."
Today, Mr. Lloyd remains devoted to both his
music and his spirituality, balancing his busy concert schedule with
frequent visits to the Vedanta Temple down the road. Claiming that his
music has always "danced on many shores," Lloyd has also continued to
explore new and novel sounds in his compositions, solidifying his role
as one of music's greatest champions of world music. "I'm still in love
with the music. I'm still drunk with it. It's been my life, you know.
It's been a great blessing for me and I've played with all the great
masters. I was around when giants roamed the earth," he said, when asked
to reflect on his life and career. Whether he wants to admit it or not,
Charles Lloyd now stands tall amongst these giants of music and has
earned his place amongst America's greatest living legends.
Charles Lloyd plays by his own rules — whether it’s blowing on sax
with bluesman Howlin’ Wolf in Memphis while in high school or attending
USC in the late ’50s by day while jamming with L.A. jazz greats by night
or blasting off to rock star fame in the ’60s with the likes of the
Grateful Dead, Cream, and Janis Joplin. Lloyd continued his own journey when he suddenly disappeared from the
music scene in the late ’60s — at the height of his popular
success — to watch hawks soar over Big Sur and to nurture his spirit.
When Lloyd … slowly … emerged from Big Sur in the mid-’70s, it was to
move to Santa Barbara: first by living part-time at Beach Boy Mike
Love’s Montecito beach house and then moving permanently to the hills of
Montecito in the ’80s. Since then, from what he describes as his “laboratory and ashram”
close by the Vedanta Temple where he worships, Lloyd expanded his
vision. For the last 30 years, he has performed around the world on
tenor saxophone, flute, and Hungarian tárogató and made 17 records of
extraordinary range, including his Wild Man Dance suite,
released last week on Blue Note Records to enthusiastic international
reviews. On Monday, April 20, Lloyd was inducted as a 2015 Jazz Master
by the National Endowment for the Arts, the “highest honor that our
nation bestows on jazz artists,” according to the NEA. On a recent Saturday at home, just 24 hours after the New York Times had published a long, flattering profile and featured Lloyd’s work on its popular Popcast,
he was days from departure for the NEA ceremony at Lincoln Center, and
from his performance of the North American premiere of his “Wild Man
Dance Suite” before the ancient Temple of Dendur, an Egyptian sanctuary
reconstructed within New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sitting in
his kitchen, though, Lloyd was serene, not excited. “I don’t live in excitement like that. My approach to excitement is
that that stuff leads to expectations, and expectations can ruin many a
great joy,” he said. “Basically what is going on with me is that I live
in the now. I don’t get into future.” DYNAMIC
DUO: Artist Dorothy Darr is Charles Lloyd’s longtime partner
and business manager and recently coproduced and codirected a
biographical documentary about Lloyd called <i>Arrows into
Infinity</i>. She shot the cover photo for his latest album, Wild Man Dance</i>, in the Santa Barbara area.This Thursday, April 23, in San Francisco, Lloyd kicks off a
four-night stand with three different bands: first the “Wild Man Dance
Suite” ensemble made up of American, Greek, and Hungarian musicians;
second his main working New Quartet with Jason Moran (piano), Reuben
Rogers (bass), and Eric Harland (drums); and third, Charles Lloyd and
Friends, featuring cosmic guitarist Bill Frisell. Lloyd then brings Charles Lloyd and Friends, including Frisell, to
his annual residency at the Lobero Theatre on Tuesday, April 28. “I like
playing here at home,” Lloyd said. “The people who are inviting
us — they care. It’s like that.” Lloyd has had a busy spring. In New York in March, on his 77th
birthday, he rocked the Village Vanguard with the New Quartet, to more
gushing ink in the New York Times. A documentary, Arrows into Infinity,
released on DVD last year about Lloyd, just became available on iTunes.
It’s codirected and coproduced by Jeffery Morse and, crucially, by
Dorothy Darr, the painter, filmmaker, photographer, and architect who is
Lloyd’s longtime partner and business manager. After the Lobero gig,
Lloyd will headline festivals across the U.S. and Europe, starting with
the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 2. On that recent Saturday, Lloyd had just finished off a cold smoothie
and was wearing a thick jacket and a knit cap against the resulting
chill when we first met. He was “looking for the right zone,” he said,
which is where he wants to be whether engrossed in a solo onstage or
when talking to The Santa Barbara Independent at home. Lloyd’s home with Darr, designed by her, is amazing: Beyond the walls
filled with artworks, many by Darr herself, beyond the grand piano and
the resting sax, through soaring living room windows, across parched
grass, lay a vertiginous view of the Santa Barbara coastline and
islands. Lloyd signaled that we should sit at the kitchen table so we could
see the harbor view as we talked. Lloyd has an expressive voice, and he
usually answers with an opening motif, inventive riffing, modulation to
related concepts, and then, engagingly, resolution to the original
question.
Drought
Like everyone, the drought is on his mind. Lloyd is a “water guy,” he said, starting with his birth in Memphis during a flood. Arrows into Infinity features long cuts of ocean waves, rivulets across pavement, and bright orange fish swimming. “It hurts,” he said of the drought, which is particularly bad in the
aquifers underlying Montecito. “When we moved up here, there was a creek
that ran year-round. Things like that are big concerns for me — our
environment.” “I’m not going to solve this,” he continued, “but I want to make a
sound universe that can transform things. That’s what I’m working on. I
would be a hypocrite if I just told you that we have to make a plan,
because I’m getting ready to go out there and get on a whole bunch of
fossil-fuel airplanes.”
NEA Jazz Master
The 2015 NEA Jazz Master Award likewise contains crosscurrents. Given
Lloyd’s intense, international composing, performing, and recording,
he’s not contemplating victory laps on the lifetime achievement circuit.
His universalistic music transcends “Jazz” in the popular sense. The
NEA is government, which Lloyd bypassed during the Cold War to perform
in the USSR at the invitation of Soviet artists. Lloyd, however,
appreciates validation, and he’s sensitive to having been overlooked.
“I learned a long time ago that I would have to be able to endow my
own creativity,” he said with a catch, quietly looking at the harbor,
“and, in so knowing, and in so doing, I never held my breath for the
gold-plated watch because I didn’t expect it; but when it does come like
this thing [the NEA award], it’s an honor because of the company that I
keep, like Miles, Ornette, Sonny Rollins, Wayne.” Lloyd pondered ageism in institutional arts since Moran, 40, his
principal working pianist, received about $500,000 from a MacArthur
Foundation “genius grant” in 2010 “to do what you want,” while the NEA
Fellowship is much less and is awarded to older musicians. This year,
the musicians inducted with Lloyd are jazz composer, pianist, and leader
Carla Bley, 78, and composer, hard bop saxophonist, and leader George
Coleman, 80. “To at least be considered in your lifetime, in a culture that hasn’t
been very kind to its artists because of the setup of the world, it’s a
great honor,” Lloyd said, slowly. “My spiritual practice is about
nonattachment and to beware of cravings. I learned to sublimate that
stuff and not be chasing that thing. So, of course, it’s great.”
Race at USC
Lloyd’s performance at the seminal 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival was released as Forest Flower,
with Lloyd in full cry on his tenor on the bright-yellow album cover.
Backed by some of the best jazz musicians ever (Keith Jarrett, piano;
Cecil McBee, bass; and Jack DeJohnette, drums), the record caught the
business comet, sold more than a million copies, and created a ’60s
cultural “moment” for boomers before the decade turned dark. Lloyd and his band were virtuosos, and their cross-rhythms, complex
progressions, and deep experimentation blew away those of psychedelic
rockers. Lloyd’s image was broadly inclusive, intelligent, and
post-racial. What was it like, though, for Lloyd before he became a totem
of the Woodstock nation, when, as a teen, with a “gendarme” on his
tail, he left segregated Memphis to attend the crew-cut University of
Southern California in the late 1950s? “The life on campus was all white and very strange; I was the
invisible man,” remembered Lloyd, in a nod to Ralph Ellison, “but I was a
philosopher, so I could see quickly what was going on.” When he was
leaving Memphis, he received offers from USC fraternities to rent rooms
in their houses during the summer before he began his freshman year.
Solicited, that is, until he showed up. Within USC’s School of Music, he faced resistance. “I had this big
fantasy dream; I wanted to integrate Bartók with Duke Ellington and all
kinds of Charlie Parker stuff, and I had to make these correlations
between J.S. Bach and Charlie Parker. No one really had any interest in
any of that, so I realized that I was in the wrong place, but for my
parents, I stayed.” “Education was the ticket” that Lloyd’s “black middle-class family”
emphasized, where you had to graduate from college, which he did in
1960. “But I was bit by the cobra, so it was too late for me to not play
music,” he said. Lloyd escaped into the jam sessions of L.A. during a historically
fertile period. “There was great music everywhere, so I played all the
time. I did a duality thing [with campus life],” he said. “I hung out
with Ornette, Billy Higgins, and Scott LaFaro, a close friend; Gerald
Wilson had a big band, and so we all played in that, too. There were a
lot of sessions, a lot of places to go. We had a beautiful community.” A coda is that about 10 years ago, USC called on Lloyd in Santa
Barbara to solicit a life estate contribution of his compound to a USC
endowment. “Then upon my ascension, they could make it a think tank,”
Lloyd recounted. “USC got excited, and the Dean of the School of Music
wanted to meet me. It was a change over from when I was there.” But it didn’t work out. “We just had to agree to disagree,” Lloyd
said a bit fiercely. “USC said they would have a building in my name. I
don’t need a building in my name. That’s not what I need. I need to play
this music, and I need to touch people’s hearts and spirits.”
The New Record
His new record, Wild Man Dance, came about after Lloyd
played the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, in western Poland, in 2011.
“They said that it was the best concert they ever had, and they
commissioned me to write an orchestral-length work,” he said. “Wild Man Dance Suite” was composed by Lloyd during hikes and swims
and “percolating” in Santa Barbara before he returned to Wroclaw to
perform its world premiere in late 2013. In addition to the American
jazz musicians — Gerald Clayton, pianist; Joe Sanders, bassist; and
Gerald Cleaver, drummer — Lloyd’s backing group included Sokratis
Sinopoulos, of Greece, playing the bowed lyra, and Miklós Lukács, of
Hungary, on cimbalom, a large frame hammered dulcimer. “I wrote this music, and I heard it at home, and I played it for
Dorothy, and the musicians heard it, and we went on the journey,” he
said, “so we got blessed, you know — that is what that was. The
audience was ready to receive it.” In “Flying over the Odra Valley,” the first of Wild Man Dance’s
six movements, Sinopoulos on lyra bows an ancient folk melody high over
the abstract intervals of Lukács’s cimbalom. Lloyd waits … and then
joins after three minutes with a tender melody that he develops around a
modal core over unsettling piano chords, bass, and drumming. Sanders’s
bass follows with an earthy solo, and Clayton then solos with dissonant
chords. A rhythmic storm builds. Lloyd returns, flying above the tumult.
The suite flows to “Gardner” with beautiful melodies from the lyra
supported by piano and bass. Lloyd blows long meditative lines, adding
energy and space, moving forward in ever-more-emotive phrases, soft,
uplifting, climbing higher. In “Lark,” Clayton’s piano sets the scene with block chords. The
lyra’s plaintive melody is harmonized by bowed bass and supported by
cimbalom arpeggios and the drums lightly tapping. Lloyd waits again as
dissonance builds, this time for six minutes, and then piles on, pulling
and pushing. A dramatic piano solo transitions to swinging 4/4 time,
complete with walking bass and Clayton channeling McCoy Tyner to Lloyd’s
Coltrane. “River” is the most accessible movement in this era of download and
subscription. Clayton’s transition previews the chart, and Lloyd opens
with a riff as memorable as any in music recently. After solid
complementary B and C sections, Lloyd steps out with a tight swinging
solo that’s straight from Memphis. Clayton’s piano, Sanders’s bass, and
Cleaver’s drums follow with inventive solos. The rhythm then moves
essentially to a four-beat rock groove. Lukács, in a highlight of the
entire work, elevates over the three-chord vamp with an extraordinary
cimbalom solo. Lloyd returns, tosses the opening melody around with
Clayton, and ends the movement triumphantly. “Invitation” returns the beautiful bowed lyra over harmonized bowed
bass, with the piano joining for a trio and the percussion making it a
quartet. Lloyd again is patient and lets his musicians jam, coming in
finally with long pastoral lines against unresolved chords that
gradually increase in intensity before he plays a sensitive outro. In the final movement, the namesake for Wild Man Dance,
Lloyd comes in with a whisper, evoking earlier melodies, before playing
the theme in a soft Lester Young tone. The rhythm section responds with
broad support. Lukács hammers broad angles on the cimbalom, interlocked
wonderfully with Cleaver’s drums. Lloyd restates briefly. Sinopoulos’s
lyra — propelled by a driving bass line and locked drums — soars on
an extended improvisation: Jimi Hendrix and Stéphane Grappelli and
Vassar Clements. Lloyd retakes control initially with a Middle Eastern
vibe leading to free association among musicians, and then Lloyd brings
the entire 74-minute work to a gentle close, to festival applause. Lloyd is in superb form, and the band sounds great. The cimbalom and
the lyra provide vital colors. The recording quality is excellent. This sounds weird, but, when first listening to Lloyd’s first solo on Wild Man Dance, I felt Santa Barbara Pride similar to watching local Katy Perry nail February’s Super Bowl halftime performance.
Next?
Lloyd said “he’s not good enough to quit yet.” So, what’s next? “I
have lots of stuff going on, but nothing I can report to you,” he said
officially. “What I’m working on, these sounds and these tones that are
coming to me, I don’t have words … I can play it.” Lloyd took me up some stairs to his rooftop and into a beautiful
workspace with sweeping views of the channel. “I want you to hear
something,” and he fiddled with tiny track lists on a laptop hooked to
killer speakers. Click: An opera swelled through the room. Whoops. He clicked it off. “I’m an opera guy,” he said. “I listen to the Met on Saturdays.” Click:
an old blues snippet. (“Oh, why my baby, why? Ooohhh…”). He clicked the
laptop again. Out of the speakers came Jason Moran, speaking from the
stage of the Village Vanguard performance in March, introducing Lloyd’s
band: “Sometimes you do things to realize your dreams,” Moran says, “and
this is realizing a dream tonight to play on a stage with Charles
Lloyd, Eric Harland, and Ruben Rogers.” Lloyd’s New Quartet launches immediately into descending lines,
following Lloyd on sax. Moran takes a solo on piano with cascading
chords, the bass and drums instantly responding. I glanced over, and Lloyd had a gigantic smile. He raised his voice above the speakers to say that he went to Poland
with six movements of the “Wild Man Dance Suite,” but this is a seventh
movement, not recorded in Wroclaw. “I didn’t take it because I didn’t
think it was completed,” he said. “When I got back from touring and
recording over there, and I played it to myself, it was pristine. During
the time I was gone, it became complete. So what you are looking for is
looking for you.” Lloyd’s sax returns after Moran’s solo, like an animal gliding out of
the trees in a European forest. It picks up pace, and a secondary theme
emerges. The rest of his quartet is instantly there.
Lloyd is leading some of the finest musicians in the world into new
territories, with no concessions to being an elder statesman, with no
boundaries, with no rules but his own.
Charles Lloyd Takes the Comeback Road Less Traveled : Jazz: The
reclusive sax great has emerged again from his Big Sur hide-out with a
new band, a new album and a rare Los Angeles appearance today.
by JOSEF WOODARD
June 14, 1990
Los Angeles Times
At the Montreal Jazz Festival last July, sax player Charles Lloyd
strolled into the lobby of the festival’s central hotel, beaming despite
the jet lag. Lloyd was looking forward to the next night’s concert and a
brief European tour that would culminate in a recording session. A
year later, the normally shy Lloyd is out in support of the finished
product, “Fish Out of Water,” his best-received album in perhaps 20
years. Today at noon, Lloyd will play a special concert as a
kickoff to the Arco “Concerts in the Sky” series at the Bonaventure
hotel in downtown Los Angeles. According to manager Steve Cloud,
this will be Lloyd’s first official L.A. performance in about 15 years.
He follows it up with a concert at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theater on
June 29. Joining Lloyd will be his “Swedish Rhythm Kings"--drummer Ralph
Penland, bassist Tony Dumas and pianists Tad Weed (in Los Angeles) and
Theo Saunders (in Santa Barbara). The Lloyd story circa 1990 has all the makings of a comeback saga, except that he never went away, exactly. “We
have to live in the now,” an incurably philosophical Lloyd reasoned
during a recent interview in Santa Barbara (he has split his time
between homes in Montecito and Big Sur for several years). “It’s
important for us to live in this moment and live fully to do our best
today. We can’t change a note of the past, and to worry about the future
is some other stuff. “Here I am at 51 and I feel as young as the springtime. That we must keep alive in ourselves--that spirit of eternal youth.” The
Memphis-born saxman first spent time in Los Angeles during the late
‘50s while attending USC. He went on to play with Chico Hamilton, then
began leading his own groups, including one with pianist Keith Jarrett,
drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. The ‘60s Lloyd Quartet
found itself crossing over into the lucrative rock market, achieving a
level of fame atypical in jazz. For several years during the ‘70s, however, Lloyd retreated from the
music world, delving into Eastern religion and an introspective,
reclusive lifestyle, making only a few albums. Then, in the ‘80s, French
pianist Michel Pettruciani coaxed Lloyd out from his Big Sur enclave
and the two recorded and toured together. A couple of years ago,
Manfred Eicher, owner of the German jazz and new-music label ECM,
expressed interest in recording Lloyd, and manager Cloud lobbied for the
deal. “Frankly, I was resistant at first,” Lloyd recalled. “I
thought that, because my music is very warm and his concept is Nordic,
maybe he wouldn’t be able to capture what is in my music. “After
the first take, this guy was jumping up in the air. When I went in to
hear the first playback, I was bowled over. . . . My deeper soul and
essence came through. Man, it wasn’t cold. It was warm.” When
Lloyd speaks, he does so with an inimitable style and in tangential
circles, much like a jazz soloist in flight. A complex persona emerges:
He is at once a mystic, a shrewd businessman and a music historian. “My
song is not about straight-on, staccato bullets,” he explained. “I’m
more a painter than a machine gun sergeant. I’m about the adoration of
the spirit and the spiritual. “I’ve got an intuition that people
are hungry for the beauty of the music again. Although this rock ‘n’
roll stuff has been promoted heavily, it actually comes from Robert
Johnson and the Delta. It all comes from deep sources--Little Richard,
Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Ace, Bobby Blue Bland, B.B. King.
These (modern groups) put a little silk dress on it and spin it around
two or three times and then somebody can merchandise it.”
Music; Searching For the Sound Of a Cosmos Singing
by Ben Waltzer
I'M extaterated!,'' improvised Charles
Lloyd, the 63-year-old saxophonist and composer, anticipating a stint
last month at the Blue Note to promote his latest release, ''Hyperion
With Higgins.'' He paused dramatically, focused his penetrating eyes on
mine and recounted in hushed tones what the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins
used to tell him: '' 'No matter how good a man sounds in his home town,
he don't sound the same in New York City.' ''
Mr.
Lloyd, who lives near Santa Barbara, Calif., and rarely plays in New
York, was agitated. Performing in the jazz capital of the world can make
any musician nervous. But he acted as if he had something to prove.
Mr.
Lloyd, who grew up in Memphis, draws inspiration from the blues and a
distinctly psychedelic strain of Eastern spiritualism. Charles Lloyd
talking sounds like Dennis Hopper imitating B. B. King reading Carlos
Castaneda. ''I am a spirit on a human journey, reaching for the
hyperion,'' Mr. Lloyd said.
When I asked him about his music, he stopped me: ''It's not my music. I'm begging the creator to give it to me.''
But what about practicing? ''You've got to row the boat,'' he replied.
Mr.
Lloyd described himself as a ''junior elder,'' a seeker who has trouble
navigating ''terra firma.'' His goal, he said, is to provide
''inspiration and consolation.''
During
our interview, however, Mr. Lloyd was concerned with more than
spiritual matters; he was preoccupied with his own status in the music
and its history. Rather than engage in a dialogue, he regurgitated
rehearsed anecdotes placing himself in the firmament of jazz stars; the
greats wanted to hire him, the comers wanted to join him. ''I was there
when giants roamed the earth,'' Mr. Lloyd is fond of saying. For a
musician whose previous record, ''The Water Is Wide,'' released last
year, was widely praised for its pristine tranquillity, Charles Lloyd
seems ill-at-ease, eager to prove his jazz bona fides.One wonders why.
The
arc of his career may provide some clues. In 1960, the drummer Chico
Hamilton, then experimenting with a form of jazz chamber music, hired
Mr. Lloyd as his group's musical director. Mr. Lloyd tried to synthesize
two streams of the early-60's jazz avant-garde: John Coltrane's
ecstatic spirit and Eastern overtones and Ornette Coleman's rocketlike
melodic declarations. ''Man From Two Worlds'' and ''Passin' Thru'' are
the group's signal recordings. With the Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo,
the records are also early attempts at a fusion of jazz and rock music.
After
four years with Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Lloyd left to join the alto
saxophonist Julian (Cannonball) Adderley's group. Live film from a 1964
London concert reveals how Mr. Lloyd's pensive, spatial approach to
melody broadens the music's emotional range, softening its tight
crackle. While stylistically tethered to Mr. Coltrane, Mr. Lloyd was
developing his own sound.
In 1966, Mr.
Lloyd set out on his own and something unexpected happened. His record
''Forest Flower: Live at Monterey'' became one of the first jazz albums
to sell a million copies. His quartet -- which included the first
pairing of the pianist Keith Jarrett and the drummer Jack DeJohnette --
played an incantatory, freewheeling style of jazz that appealed to the
same audiences that followed psychedelic rock groups. Since then, Mr.
Lloyd has cultivated a shamanic persona, becoming the hippie's jazzman.
In 1967, Mr.
Lloyd won Downbeat magazine's ''Jazzman of the Year'' award and critics
looked to him, a bandleader who could compete with Jimi Hendrix and the
Grateful Dead at the Fillmore, to carry jazz music to the masses. Not
all critics were so sanguine. In 1968, Martin Williams saw the showman
in the shaman, calling Mr. Lloyd a ''show-biz John Coltrane.''
It's
clear from listening to some of the records today that Mr. Lloyd's
success depended on his willingness to act like a rock star and let his
sidemen play freely. Although Mr. Lloyd wrote some good compositions --
''Manhattan Carousel'' is one -- his playing connects with little beyond
his own ecstasy. Mr. Jarrett and Mr. DeJohnette, however, along with
the bassist Cecil McBee, swing together with a sharp clip and raw
directness.
Despite receiving mixed
reviews, Mr. Lloyd's records sold big. Expertly produced and shrewdly
marketed by George Avakian on Atlantic Records, Mr. Lloyd toured the
world and created an international sensation when he performed in the
Soviet Union. (Many believe his success led Miles Davis, who later
scooped up Mr. Jarrett and Mr. DeJohnette as sidemen, to explore jazz
fusion.) Finally, at the height of his commercial success, Mr. Lloyd, as
he put it, ''got off the bus.''
''I had to unstrip my mansuit,'' he said, adding, ''I put my six-shooter away while it was still firing.''
Weakened
by drug use, his mother's death and the fatigue of years on the road,
Mr. Lloyd moved to Malibu, Calif., bought oceanfront properties and
meditated in the woods. Returns from his real estate sales freed Mr.
Lloyd to pursue spiritual matters for most of two decades. Although he
was coaxed out of his solitude in the early 80's by the young French
pianist Michel Petrucciani -- they made two albums together on Blue Note
-- Mr. Lloyd rededicated himself to music only in 1986, when an
intestinal ailment threatened his life. Three years later he signed with
the German label ECM and has since released eight albums, many with his
''Full Service Orchestra of Love,'' featuring the drummer Billy Hart
and the Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson.
If
Mr. Lloyd's sound in the late 60's was at times brash and unbridled,
his seclusion rendered it ethereal and diffident. Following his audience
into a middle age in which caravans of Volkswagen buses have given way
to car pools of Volvos, Mr. Lloyd has exchanged his spectacles and bell
bottoms for sunglasses and tailored linen suits.
Restrained
and quiet, his ECM recordings, some of which come perilously close to
sounding like New Age music, bear a tedious sameness because he places
too much faith in the hyperion and not enough in terra firma. Mr. Lloyd
plays to the heavens and depends on divine inspiration rather than
working a band and its ideas to make the music catch fire. Like the
force water gains flowing downhill through pipes of diminishing size,
meaning in jazz, regardless of style, comes from a musician's ability to
funnel inspiration through form. Mr. Lloyd's recorded music, at least,
is too frequently like a meandering river that may, or may not, take you
anywhere.
''Hyperion With Higgins,''
which was compiled from music left over from last year's ''The Water Is
Wide'' session, takes us somewhere. The recording is dedicated to the
great drummer Billy Higgins, who died in May, and presents with rare
clarity what Mr. Lloyd has been trying to do all along. In his
''Darkness on the Delta Suite,'' he successfully integrates his
passions, making the blues, jazz, spirituals and Eastern music coexist
with openness and precision.
''It's about Robert Johnson on the banks of the Ganges with his feet in the water,'' he said.
The
record is also noteworthy because it documents some young leaders in
jazz, the pianist Brad Mehldau and the bassist Larry Grenadier, playing
with Mr. Higgins. The effects can be mesmerizing. Mr. Mehldau's solo on
Mr. Lloyd's ''Miss Jessye'' is a small masterpiece of motivic
development, one idea giving birth to another with grace and lyrical
drama. Mr. Grenadier, whose playing is as direct as it is sophisticated,
finds a pulse with Mr. Higgins that is not really behind the beat but
somehow under it, and Mr. Higgins telepathically anticipates Mr.
Mehldau's left-hand harmonic accents.
At
the Blue Note, Mr. Lloyd struck a further balance between his competing
natures. He performed with incisiveness and lyricism. Unlike most jazz
saxophonists, he played not above the band but through it, his group not
so much supporting as swirling around him. Late in the set, Mr. Lloyd
laid out a passage of gut-bucket blues, distorting and modulating the
same phrase through different keys. The band recognized what he was
doing and responded, locking in, increasing the music's intensity. I
yelped enthusiastically.
Charles Lloyd
was showing us what he knows. And then I remembered his often repeated
motto: ''As a young man I knew too much. Now I know so little. And I'm
knowing less all the time.''
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A version of this article appears in print on , Section 2, Page 31 of the National edition with the headline: Music; Searching For the Sound Of a Cosmos Singing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |
by Greg Burk October 4, 2000 LA Weekly "A MAN TELLS HIS PERSONAL TRUTH, WITH SUCH loving passion and honesty
and intelligence and fire, and ecclesiastical everything-he's-got, on
his knees. And it transforms the mundane, it transforms the molecules." Charles Lloyd. Improvising. "There is no time, there is now. When I hear these guys playing in
the now, when I hear Yardbird goin' through there with brilliance at the
speed of light, and modulating in all kinds of ultrapolations and
interpolations and all kinds of semidemiquavers and all kinds of beauty,
what is that? It's kind of like the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita."
Lloyd's voice drops down and he pelts it out: "'He knows bliss in the
Atman and wants nothing else. Cravings torment the heart. He renounces
cravings. I called him illumined, not shaken by adversity, not hankerin'
after happiness, free from fear, free from anger, free from greed, free
from things of desire.' "When I play, time, it goes away, and the music is all that's going
on. There's this vacuum state where you go to quantum mechanics, where
before the creative process there's this trembling being, this quality
of the infinite elixirs of the unmanifest, the absolute, before the
absolute comes into the relative. That's the thing that I have adoration
for. We live for these times when the music happens and we're whole." The incantatory way he talks, in those light Memphis rhythms þ it
almost seems that Lloyd is not speaking to me; it's more like a
vernacular prayer in which we're both participants. His speech, in other
words, is like his music. He doesn't do many interviews, claiming, as
one who communicates through his sax or flute, that he's unskilled with
words. He's wrong, though. "This cruel world is not set up for you to sing your song. So we're
going to sing it anyway. We make a direct connection with the Man, and
render unto God what's God's, and render unto Caesar what's Caesar's.
But Caesar can't come in there, because you hear the sound, and Brahman
is in the sound. "When I grew up, all the old-timers told you, 'You've got to have
your own sound þ but you won't have the real stuff for 20, 30 years.'
It's in your mind's ear. It's like a Holy Grailtype thing. I'm gonna
fess up, I don't have it to this day." Mr. Lloyd may believe he hasn't perfected his sound, but whatever
sound he's got, it's deep, as deep as anybody's, and it keeps getting
better. Listening to some of his '60s recordings þ Dream Weaver, Forest
Flower, Journey Within and more, which sold in rock-star quantities at
the time þ I hear passion, beauty and a searching soul. But in the way
he plays today, I hear those things, and beyond the search there's more
finding, more arrival, more peace. The process is never complete, of
course. "The sound is like a carrot on a stick. The closer you get to it,
then He'll move it. If I had it, I'd plain lay down. I'd go back into
the forest. 'Cause I don't think there's a reason to stay around here,
with the level of ignorance that exists on this planet, unless you can
do some serious service." Service he has done. Lloyd's music has never been just a way to make a
living; it's a pathway to . . . well, you heard him. And he wants to
keep the path clear. When he speaks of going back into the forest, it's
not a metaphor. In 1969, year of Woodstock and Altamont, he disbanded
the famous quartet he'd formed with Keith Jarrett (piano), Jack
DeJohnette (drums) and Cecil McBee or Ron McClure (bass) well before
they'd milked out their udder, and he "got off the bus," going into
seclusion in Malibu and then Big Sur. He wouldn't return to full-time
performing and recording for nearly 20 years. "My mother had just died, and things were gettin' kind of harsh.
They'd killed Dr. King, the climate was changing, there was a polarity
of people losing that kind of fortitude that it takes to be a warrior
for peace. I went to work on myself, so that I would be more equipped to
serve the Creator and music and mankind, and I had to face the mirror
of my own inadequacies." After that period of reflection, 1989 saw the first fruits of a love
match with the Munich label ECM and its guiding light, Manfred Eicher.
The pairing, Lloyd suggests, was more than a coincidence; he feels that
Eicher's famous aesthetic of spare beauty derives in part from the seeds
the windman blew with him when he toured Europe several times in the
'60s. So hooking up with ECM was almost a reunion, a family tie
re-established. The Water Is Wide, the latest of the seven albums Lloyd has made for
the label, revives another old connection: with Los Angeles. Lloyd lived
here for several years beginning in 1956; it was during that time that
he met Billy Higgins, and he and the drummer have been close ever since.
Eicher, having observed how naturally the two collaborated on the 1997
soundtrack to the Alan Rudolph film Afterglow and on last year's deeply
soulful ECM recording Voice in the Night, suggested they do a special
project together; he even made the unusual concession of letting Lloyd
and his wife, artist Dorothy Darr, act as producers. "That blew my dress way up," says Lloyd, still twitching with
excitement several months after the fact. "I wanted Master Higgins to
have his own drum kit, I wanted him to have his own support system, I
wanted him to be able to take off and go to the mosque when he wants to,
and he teaches over there at UCLA." Held over from Voice was John
Abercrombie, avatar of guitaristic penetration and taste, an ideal foil
for the saxist. Lloyd also brought in Brad Mehldau, a big-minded,
ghost-fingered young pianist who lives in L.A., and added Mehldau's
bassist, Larry Grenadier. He had everything he wanted. "It was like a
state of grace suspended." But the project strained him. "I was like a madman. I didn't sleep. I
planned this recording for a long time. One thing I knew before going
in: I wanted to bring something tender to the world." LLOYD THINKS MAYBE HIS OBSESSION WITH TENDERNESS is rooted in a
childhood insufficiency thereof. His mother wasn't ready for parenthood,
their home life was unstable, and young Charles got left with relatives
and strangers a lot. "I felt kind of abandoned and like a loner in this
world. My mother had these large mammary glands þ they were so
beautiful, I wanted to kiss 'em and snuggle up to them, y'know." His
voice is high, then it drops way down. "No parts was for me, man." Music and spirituality helped fill his soul. "I felt a presence, and
something began to inform me. My grandfather built the church in his
area, but I'd be afraid, because big sisters would jump up
sanctified-style and start running around the house þ man, I was scared I
was gonna get trampled. At the other end of town, my aunts and my
cousins would take me to the Catholic school, and those nuns would beat
me on the hands all day, and I couldn't learn anything there, so I went
to public school in the fourth grade, and this wonderfully warm teacher,
Miss Tandy, she gave me such loving vibes that I made connections. "I started hearing this music þ that was the real God connection. The music was real, more real than I can tell you." In the '40s and early '50s, Lloyd's Memphis was charged with sound.
Names of contemporaries are constantly spilling out of his mouth: "Hank
Crawford, George Coleman, and tons of guys that you don't even know
their names. Willie Mitchell, who later produced Al Green, had a big
band playin' like Dizzy's. Everybody in the neighborhood played music.
I'd go by these guys' houses as a little kid and tremble, because I
would hear the music coming out of the door. Duke's band, Basie's band,
Diz used to come through town. I heard Mr. Armstrong. My best friend in
high school was Booker Little"þ a prodigious trumpeter who would later
star with Eric Dolphy and Max Roach, and die of uremia at 23. "I also
played with blues bands þ Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Ace, Junior Parker, B.B.
King, Lowell Fulson. "Those guys that I grew up with, they took the warmth from the
humidity, but not the stench of it." As easily as he jumps octaves on
his horn, Lloyd makes a connection between Southern racism and Southern
humidity. Though he doesn't look exotic by Los Angeles standards, his
lineage (African, Cherokee, Mongolian and Irish, celebrated in his All
My Relations) got him the wrong kind of attention in his hometown. "The poor crackers down there, living in a climate filled with that
kind of humidity and that degree of ignorance, they were very slow. And
my tempo" þ he snaps his fingers quickly þ "was in there, you know. We
were dealing with higher laws, like Einstein. Bird discovering the atom
and stuff like that. Phineas Newborn, this great pianist comin' out of
Art Tatum, playin' Chopin and Beethoven, turned me on to Bird." But Lloyd was forced to leave Memphis in a hurry. "My mother had to
ship me out, because the cops were chasing us. We were playing at these
clubs, and these white girls were going crazy over us, and the cops were
flippin' out. Redneck kind of stuff." He was 18, and the year was 1956. He lammed to Chicago and then to
Los Angeles, where it didn't take long for him to feel at home, because
"There was a community of people drunk with this thing that Bird had
laid out." The names come spilling forth again: Dexter Gordon, Billy
Higgins, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy, Buddy Collette,
Harold Land, Larance Marable, Frank Butler, Frank Morgan, Sonny Clark,
Walter Norris, Gerald Wilson. Jam sessions, practice sessions, nightclub
performances every day and night, at the exact moment when the tight
rigor of bebop was mutating into extended free improvisation. And for
Lloyd, that was just the jazz side of things. He also enrolled at USC,
where he took composition, and studied Bartók. When he graduated, Lloyd began to teach. Then, in 1961, he got a call
from Collette, whom he honors as a spiritual father to Charles Mingus,
Eric Dolphy, James Newton and many others, including himself. Dolphy,
who'd replaced Collette in drummer Chico Hamilton's groundbreaking
chamber-jazz ensemble, had split to join Mingus' multidimensional riot.
Hamilton needed a new windman. Lloyd was launched. He moved to New York, where he hung with
Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Miles Davis and the other prime movers, in
1964 joining Cannonball Adderley's hot soul-jazz band on the
recommendation of Quincy Jones, whom he'd met in Memphis years before. Then, in 1966, just in time for the dawning of the Age of Aquarius,
Lloyd gathered his quartet with Jarrett, DeJohnette and McBee, and blew
the minds of the Love Children. He transported 'em at the Newport and
Monterey festivals. He rocked 'em at the Fillmore, even at his first
fill-in gig there, when the kids had no clue they were grooving to jazz.
He wasn't trying to cross over; it was just that the R&B influences
and long-spieling excursions that had been creeping into jazz through
the likes of Art Blakey and John Coltrane were entering mass
alternaculture consciousness through the Rolling Stones and the Byrds,
and Stan Getz had already bridged the gap between jazz and Latin to make
radio hits like "The Girl From Ipanema." Lloyd cradled it all in gently
rolling rhythms and memorable riffs, and, without compromising
anything, became a pop star. He influenced the Grateful Dead and The Band. He did acid with Jimi
Hendrix. Members of the Jefferson Airplane dropped by with mounds of
blow. The late '60s rushed by like the Midnight Special. During our main interview, at his home in Santa Barbara, Lloyd
concentrates on the roots and motivation of his music. Then, after
talking about the day to his wife, he starts to think maybe he's
whitewashed himself a trifle. So he calls me up. Okay: This was a guy who knew Owsley; who popped amphetamines like
M&Ms; who was glad to partake of whatever drifted his way. "You take
DMT, and you go to ancient China, and you look at your friend, and his
hair is like huge ropes," he says. "Sometimes we played at the Fillmore,
and I just held my instrument, didn't make any music. Bill Graham was
mad at me, but I didn't need the flute þ I was connected." One time he
was with his band in a car on an Arizona road, everybody high, and a
semi jackknifed directly in front of them. "We closed our eyes, and when
we opened them . . . we were on the other side." Drug use, indeed, was the Information Superhighway of the time.
"Master Higgins calls it tragic magic," he says. "Once you've gotten
high, it's like, 'Hello!' Drugs were a constant companion for many
years. But even when I was doing drugs, I was seeking the higher thing.
My intensity never abated." Now he starts to feel like he's making excuses. "I don't want to come
off as high above it," he says, admitting that he still struggles with
the urge. And he emphasizes that he's far from encouraging young people
to indulge. When Lloyd went into the woods in 1969, getting clean was one of his
primary objectives, along with a general re-orientation. There have been
similar disappearances and returns in the world of artists, but not
many: You think of Sonny Rollins in jazz, Gauguin in painting, Castaneda
in mysticism. Sometimes, like J.D. Salinger, â they never come back. Lloyd's return to performing was sporadic. He played festivals here
and there, taught. A lifelong spiritual bent led him to begin studying
Vedanta (based on the Hindu Vedas) with Ritajananda in 1982; he's still
absorbed in the discipline. In 1986, a serious intestinal ailment hurled
him into emergency surgery while he was visiting Santa Barbara. Since
he already owned property there, his convalescence seemed a good enough
reason to stay. WITH 20 YEARS SEPARATING LLOYD'S '60s recordings from the ECM years,
you'd expect differences, and they're present: In place of an exuberant,
virtuosic free-for-all, you now hear quiet consideration, a combination
of austerity and sensuality, a feeling that the balance of the universe
hangs in every note. These recent recordings will never sound dated. And the new The Water Is Wide is one of the best. While beauty is the
hymn book here, and the whole congregation sings together, there are
moments when individual inflections make the ecstasy almost painful. The
way Abercrombie's guitar gently introduces "Prayer," then unites with
Lloyd's tenor, then dances with it in simple harmony, is as perfect a
metaphor for spiritual devotion as you can get. Lloyd's yearning tribute
to Billie Holiday, "Lady Day," is really made whole at the end, when
Higgins turns up a dense cymbal rush like a bright lamp burning its
last, then lets it fade. Lloyd returns to some touchstone songs he
remembers from his youth; a trio of gorgeous Ellington revivals suits
the mood; and the bossa nova "Figure in Blue" swings with such
all-encompassing welcome that you could play it on the radio all day and
nobody would complain. But a couple of numbers are just unprecedented. "The Monk and the
Mermaid" (a.k.a. hermit Lloyd and former competitive swimmer Darr) is a
sax-piano dialogue that pulls involving music out of an ordinary
conversation -- wandering, sometimes a little antagonistic, yet
coherent. And despite what our ears are used to, another piano-sax duet,
"Ballade and Allegro," creates intuitively compelling melodies, phrase
after phrase, in a seeming structural vacuum. "Brad solved a musical
problem," says Lloyd quietly, "that you'd have to be Beethoven to figure
out." Throughout, Lloyd spreads his tenor sound like a transparent membrane, a window through which you can see past the clouds. BEFORE AGREEING TO AN IN-PERSON interview, Lloyd calls me up to see
whether I understand his music well enough that I won't be wasting his
time. After he discovers that I don't, that all I've got to offer are
good intentions, he invites me up to Santa Barbara anyway. He and Darr
and I meet at La Super-Rica for lunch -- he's hypoglycemic and always
has to eat at the same time of day. In person, his Native American ancestry is plainer than in any
picture I've seen, his teeth blazing out against coppery skin. His
straight white hair is cropped close. He's half a head taller than me
standing up; when we sit, I'm looking down at him. "You have the
advantage of me, sir," he says. "I'm all legs." Once he's tactfully determined that I'm carrying no concealed
weapons, Lloyd lets thin, smart Darr drive their vehicle home so he can
get in my heap and guide me up into the hills. They live in a tasteful
Southwestern-style compound created by Darr, who numbers painting,
photography and architectural design among her skills; Lloyd bought the
land many years ago, when it was still cheap. They grow much of their
own food. He loves avocados. "I'm here to fess up right now, I don't function so well on terra
firma," says Lloyd. "Fortunately, I got a mate who makes me look good.
She keeps me pregnant in the dark þ I'm always having these little
babies, these songs. I live in my own world. But I can't find my way
down the street." On the way, he gets a notion. "Turn in here." It's the driveway to
the Vedanta temple he attends. We remove our shoes, and he brings me
inside. Everything's carved to engender the kind of complex but serene
impression that a lot of Eastern art does, a presentation that makes the
gilt ornateness of the Vatican look like a West Hollywood fireplace
ensemble. The ceiling is supported by individual dark-polished logs.
It's cool and dim. We sit in a couple of the chairs, for I don't know
how long. I have no inclination to move. I think of this later, when the
sun's lowering and I'm about to drive back to insane Los Angeles: The
whole afternoon I'm with Charles Lloyd, I don't look at my watch once. Some way or another, we're outside the Vedanta temple. My ears are
open out here in the country, and I can breathe. "I want to show you
something," says Lloyd. We go over to a shrub alongside the parking lot.
It's a rosemary bush. Lloyd takes a green-needled branch between his palms, rubs it
briskly. A fresh, powerful, wild atmosphere rises up through my nose and
mouth, and spreads through my body. I mumble something, at a loss for words. Lloyd looks me in the eye and smiles, like he just discovered the atom.
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
Saxophonist Charles Lloyd
is a forward-thinking musician whose supreme improvisational talents
and interest in cross-pollinating jazz with rock as well as non-Western
styles of music established him as one of the key figures in the
development of fusion and world music. Albums like Love In (1966), Forest Flower (1967), and In the Soviet Union
(1970) were so successful in showcasing his warm, accessible playing
style on tenor saxophone and flute that for a time he enjoyed the
benefits and curses of the life of a rock star, playing sold-out dates
across the world. The pressure left him feeling spiritually empty, and
he left the music scene for a decade to follow a solitary path. After
returning in 1981, Lloyd
became one of jazz's elder statesmen, creating a body of work that
reflects the influence of his forbears and collaborators. He has
continued to work at a near-prolific pace with various ensembles that
showcase different aspects of his musical persona, from his Sangam trio with Eric Harland and Zakir Hussain to his longtime quartet and all-star fusion outfit the Marvels with guitarists Bill Frisell and Greg Leisz.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 15, 1938, Lloyd grew up surrounded by the vibrant blues and jazz scenes of his native city. Given a saxophone at age nine, Lloyd eventually studied with Memphis' legendary pianist Phineas Newborn, as well as saxophonist Irvin Reason. By his teens, Lloyd was not only best friends with schoolmate and trumpeter Booker Little, but was also gigging locally with such artists as saxophonist George Coleman and future blues icons including Bobby "Blue" Bland, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, and others. 
In 1956, Lloyd
left Memphis and enrolled at the University of Southern California to
study classical music, ultimately earning his Master's degree in music.
During this time, he performed around Los Angeles with a veritable
who's-who of avant-garde jazz including saxophonist Ornette Coleman, saxophonist Eric Dolphy, and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. Also during this time, Lloyd became a working member of Gerald Wilson's big band. In 1960, Lloyd joined drummer Chico Hamilton's ensemble as musical director, replacing Dolphy, who had left to play with bassist Charles Mingus. During his time with Hamilton, Lloyd was responsible for writing and arranging much of the music in the band and recorded several albums with Hamilton, including 1962's Transfusion, 1963's A Different Kind of Journey, 1963's A Man from Two Worlds, and 1963's Passin' Thru.
By the mid-'60s, Lloyd
had developed into a highly adept writer/arranger, as well as a
virtuoso improviser, and regular sojourns to New York City brought him
into contact with such luminaries as saxophonist John Coltrane, trumpeter Miles Davis, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, Mingus, and saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, whose group he joined in 1964. Also during this time, Lloyd began recording as a leader and released several albums, including 1965's Discovery! The Charles Lloyd Quartet and 1965's Of Course, Of Course. Lloyd continued recording as a leader after he left Adderley in 1965 and formed his own quartet, which featured future Miles Davis alum pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and bassist Cecil McBee. An extremely creative, intuitive, and adventurous ensemble, Lloyd's quartet released several exceptional albums during this time, including 1966's Dream Weaver, the 1966 live album Charles Lloyd in Europe, and 1966's Love-In.
However, this ensemble's appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1966, and the subsequent album Forest Flower: Charles Lloyd at Monterey, are what truly caught the public's attention. An expansive, sophisticated, and genre-bending performance, Forest Flower found Lloyd
and his group in peak creative form, mixing his long-burgeoning
interest in Eastern music with modal and avant-garde jazz. The
performance was a highlight at the festival and the album was one of the
first jazz recordings to sell a million copies, gain heavy radio play,
and garner a wide crossover audience during a time when rock was quickly
superseding jazz in the popular mindset. 
His success at Monterey buoyed Lloyd's
career, and he spent much of the late '60s sharing billing at such
famed rock venues as San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium alongside
artists like guitarist Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and the Grateful Dead. Such was Lloyd's
popularity that in 1967 he was voted Jazz Artist of the Year by Down
Beat and toured Europe, even playing in the U.S.S.R. during a time when
the government was discouraging jazz performances. Lloyd's
genre-bending jazz dovetailed perfectly with the free-thinking
experimentation of the late '60s, and although his music was based in
acoustic jazz, many artists took notice and went the extra step toward
electrifying jazz, most notably Miles Davis, whose 1969 classic Bitches Brew drew upon many of the same rock and world music influences that Lloyd had experimented with.
In the early '70s, with his career at its peak, Lloyd
underwent a spiritual crisis. He withdrew from the public eye and moved
to Big Sur to focus on what he described as an inner spiritual journey
and to practice meditation. He remained out of sight until 1981, when he
met the talented 18-year-old French pianist Michel Petrucciani. Inspired by Petrucciani's immense skill, Lloyd toured with the young pianist throughout the early '80s and released several albums, including the live Montreux (1982) and 1983's A Night in Copenhagen. In the late '80s, Lloyd formed a quartet with Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson and released several albums on ECM, including 1989's Fish Out of Water, 1991's Notes from Big Sur, and 1996's Canto.
His association with ECM continued throughout the next decade, a time of renewed public interest in Lloyd, and he built a steady body of work for the label, including 1999's Voice in the Night with guitarist John Abercrombie, 2000's The Water Is Wide with pianist Brad Mehldau. In August of 2001 Lloyd issued Hyperion with Higgins, an archival live date celebrating the memory of drummer Billy Higgins, who had passed in May. His 2002 album Lift Every Voice
was scheduled to be recorded on the night of September 11, 2001 at New
York City's Blue Note club. In the aftermath of 9/11, however, it was
delayed until February when Lloyd, with pianist Geri Allen, drummer Billy Hart, guitarist John Abercrombie, and bassists Marc Johnson and Larry Grenadier
played two gigs; their material drew from public-domain spirituals,
pop/rock songs, R&B tunes, and folk songs, Ellingtonia, and original
compositions. The band's collective goal was to illustrate the power of
music to provide empathy, compassion, and solace in the face of
darkness. Lift Every Voice was issued in October, and has since become one of the saxophonist's most beloved albums. In 2004, Lloyd released Which Way Is East, a collection of duets recorded with Higgins in the months before he died -- they constitute his final recordings. In 2006, Lloyd released the live album Sangam, featuring Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain. Two years later he returned with another live album, Rabo de Nube, this time with pianist Jason Moran. In 2010, Lloyd released Mirror, his 13th album for ECM, once again featuring Moran along with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland. The live album Athens Concert, featuring vocalist Maria Farantouri, followed in 2011. Lloyd continued touring for most of 2012. His next studio effort was a duet offering with pianist Jason Moran entitled Hagar's Song,
which was issued in February of 2013. The same year, the saxophonist
was commissioned to write and perform a work for Poland's Jazztopad
Festival in Wrocław. The festival also screened Arrows Into Infinity, a
documentary that looked at Lloyd's life and career. It was directed by Jeffrey Morse and his life partner, manager, and co-producer Dorothy Darr. The film made the festival and theater circuit before being released on disc by ECM in 2014.
After a nearly three-decade tenure with ECM, Lloyd re-signed to Blue Note in early 2015. His debut for the label, Wild Man Dance, had been commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival two years earlier. His band on the date included pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Joe Sanders, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, with guest appearances from Greek lyra player Sokratis Sinopoulos and Hungarian cimbalom master Miklós Lukács. Wild Man Dance was released in April.
The saxophonist celebrated his 80th birthday on
March 15, 2018 at his hometown venue, Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theatre,
accompanied by guitarist Julian Lage, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland. also on the scene for the occasion were organist Booker T. Jones and bassist (and Blue Note president) Don Was. They joined the ensemble midway through. A document of that event simply entitled 8: Kindred Spirits (Live from The Lobero), was issued by Blue Note Records in February of 2020. 
When Charles Lloyd was 22, he quit a stable job teaching school in Los
Angeles, dropped out of graduate school, and came to New York to try to
make it as a working musician. Lloyd sometimes went to see the tenor
saxophonist Coleman Hawkins playing at the Village Vanguard, which was
then, as now, the center of the jazz world. After a set, Lloyd could
make his way through the dimly lit halls of the club, past the men’s
room, to the dressing room, where Hawkins would be sitting and sipping
scotch. The younger musician viewed the older man as a guru, a deity.
Charles Lloyd was only 29 years old when TIME magazine
noted one of his most distinguishing and enduring traits. It was 1967,
and Lloyd had just led the first jazz group ever to perform at San
Francisco’s counter-cultural hotspot, the Fillmore. “Though modern jazz
normally goes over with teens like a 9pm curfew,” TIME wrote, “Lloyd’s passionate attack holds them spellbound.” Lloyd—now celebrating his 80th
birthday with us in Rose Theater—is an NEA Jazz Master, saxophone
titan, bandleader, and composer with a rare crossover appeal. To this
day, he performs his soulful music with a fervor and emotional abandon
that connects with a diverse community of listeners.
