Charles Lloyd | News | Infotext: Charles Lloyd - The Sky Will Be There Tomorrow

1. Defiant, Tender Warrior (Charles Lloyd/Arranged by Jason Moran & Charles Lloyd) (4:16)

2. The Lonely One (Charles Lloyd) (5:46)

3. Monk’s Dance (Charles Lloyd) (6:50)

4. The Water Is Rising (Charles Lloyd) (5:09)

5. Late Bloom (Charles Lloyd) (1:00)

6. Booker’s Garden (Charles Lloyd) (8:07)

7. Ghost of Lady Day (Charles Lloyd) (6:45)

8. The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (Charles Lloyd) (7:14)

9. Beyond Darkness (Charles Lloyd) (7:14)

10. Sky Valley, Spirit of the Forest (Charles Lloyd) (15:04)

11. Balm In Gilead (Traditional/Arranged by Charles Lloyd) (3:05)

12. Lift Every Voice and Sing (J.R. Johnson + J.W. Johnson/Arranged by Charles Lloyd)

13. When the Sun Comes Up, Darkness Is Gone (Charles Lloyd) (3:38)

14. Cape to Cairo (Charles Lloyd) (9:15)

15. Defiant, Reprise; Homeward Dove (Charles Lloyd) (4:21)

Charles Lloyd: Tenor Saxophone / Brian Blade: Drums + Percussion / Larry Grenadier: Double Bass
Jason Moran: Piano / Produced by Dorothy Darr, Charles Lloyd & Joe Harley

 

Mit dem Album “The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow”, seinen ersten Studioaufnahmen seit den Sessions von 2017, aus denen die beiden Blue-Note-Alben “Vanished Gardens” und “Tone Poem” hervorgingen, feiert Blue Note Records am 15.3. den 86. Geburtstag von Saxofonist, Flötist und Komponist Charles Lloyd. Mit dem Titeltrack, “The Water Is Rising”, “Late Bloom”, “The Ghost of Lady Day”, “Sky Valley, Spirit of the Forest” und “When the Sun Comes Up, Darkness Is Gone” beinhaltet das Album auch gleich sechs Song-Premieren aus Lloyds Feder.

Aufgenommen wurde „The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow” mit Pianist Jason Moran, Bassist Larry Grenadier und Schlagzeuger Brian Blade im Frühjahr 2023, rund um die Konzerte zu Lloyds damaligem 85. Geburtstag. So ist das Album eine Art doppelter Geburtstags-Event zu Ehren des Saxofon-Großmeisters geworden.

Unsettled by the state of the world in 2020, Charles Lloyd began conceiving of a musical offering in the form of a new studio recording featuring a new band, a quartet of unrepressed sensibility that would be a first-time convening of four distinctive voices with the legendary saxophonist joined by pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade. In Spring 2023, around Lloyd’s 85th birthday concert in his hometown of Santa Barbara, California, the project at long last flowered with the creation of an expansive double album titled The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, a majestic body of work that presents a collection of Lloyd originals new, old, and reimagined.

Lloyd is one of the most significant musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, a highest peak of the mountain range labelled “jazz,” that is in the end, human music. After having made his way through the Memphis, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco music scenes—becoming an historical figure in each—Lloyd released one of the most unique and never replicated albums in music history, Forest Flower, and over the course of a vast musical lifetime has consistently offered the world a gift of music that can rival any art of any era.

With The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, Lloyd’s first studio recording since the 2017 sessions that yielded his acclaimed Blue Note albums Vanished Gardens and Tone Poem, he continues his monumental music making, an apex in American art, as a band leader, a composer, a flutist, and a saxophonist. The album also gives us first-time recordings of six new Lloyd compositions including the title track, “The Water Is Rising,” “Late Bloom,” “The Ghost of Lady Day,” “Sky Valley, Spirit of the Forest,” and “When the Sun Comes Up, Darkness Is Gone.”

To Lloyd and Moran’s pursuit of symmetry, Blade offers asymmetry, guided by thinking on proportion and relation. To the ink brush beauty of Lloyd’s saxophone and flute, Grenadier offers a soul-lifting double bass, sensing phenomena, applying both heart and mathematics. The emotion of one is matched with the understanding of the other. Embodying that it is through heartfelt sense that we arrive at tender common sense. The intensity of Moran’s piano playing as confronting the stasis and rust of contemporary human beings accepted by all, each adding a bit of their understanding, and the emotions intrinsic to their understanding.

Listen to the use of both thought and sentiment on “Defiant, Tender Warrior,” and pay mind to the physicality required to play it. How each individual, as a quartet, articulates defiant, then warrior. Defiant warriors. Each instrument. Making shapes beyond any expectation. 

“The Lonely One” and “The Water is Rising” have a whole lot to teach to the English language. Words are built like chords, their syllables being notes. Rhetorics of hate, deceit, manipulation, and indifference are the chord progressions or compositions that often dominate life in the English language. How chords are constructed and deconstructed to harmonize with other chords and notes, as a dynamic and peaceful use of language, is the lesson. 

The tenderness to their flowing is the tradition all are in, imbued by the presence of “The Ghost of Lady Day.” In an age when intellectuality walks hand in hand with irony, few choose to be compassionate with others with such thoughts. In the age of the gadfly, this is an education in living.

Knowledge of music making, of music theory, of how to use the instrument, is not all there is to music. There is also intuition, from pure experience of this world. The music of knowing thyself is perhaps the grand music for which we have no words, in front of which we are floored. 

The tradition—that of Prez, Bird, Lady Day, Booker, Coltrane, Shorter, Lloyd—will never accept a fate given to it by ballrooms, white shoes, red lips, however beautiful in a black dress. It seeks sound to match its spirit, to fulfill its potential. Shorter dreamed of landscapes of regeneration. Coltrane spoke of a creator’s presence within every centimeter of every musical scale. Lloyd dares to sing this culture, a culture enamored with the Brill Building, with minstrelsy, that had turned a love of Wagnerian tragedy into film soundtrack after soundtrack, that theatricality could never match spiritual existence, and people danced irreversibly.

Booker Little is a presence on this album because he is a cornerstone of the tradition. The tension heard in “Booker’s Garden” is its beauty; without tension, there can be no individual, and thus no artist. Little’s mind embraced the tension of being enlightened, and in Lloyd’s words, “left town as an enlightened Soul” at the age of 23.

Lloyd and the quartet offer us renewal in convening, renewal in music, for a true, joyous, reciprocity based on that we are One, and luminous when entangled. To us, the world that is in disarray. Each of us is often so far from freedom. The reciprocities that allow for collective human life, between government and governed, music maker and dancer, prophet and assembled inadequate. An offering to reciprocate, with which to remake a world.

 

A child of the South, I picked magnolia blossoms to place in my window. Later, in the dark of night when I had the radio under my pillow listening to Lady Day, the warm breezes would carry its sweet, paradise scent to me and offset the stench of racism that permeated the air. I left Memphis as soon as I could and headed West. As far West as the train would go… all the way to the edge of the Pacific. It was the start of my migratory pattern – West from the South, East from the West, West again, from the East – in search of One. 

Ever the dreamer – as a young man – I naively thought I could wipe out the ugliness in the world with beauty. In this era of my youth there was a collective effort through song, through protest, through writing, through art – to right the ship. I was intent on making a contribution to humanity. For a brief time we perceived a change… but it was not lasting and began to crumble. In my wildest dreams I never imagined the world to be in this place. Now. 

Under the imposed seclusion of COVID and the intense rise of violence over the Spring & Summer of 2020, I became increasingly agitated. Emotions gone haywire. My heart in knots, my mind at war with the situation. I came to the lunch table one day and told Dorothy that I wanted to go into the studio with Jason, Larry and Brian to make an offering of tenderness. She sent out smoke signals which created an endless back and forth. 2020 slid into 2021, 2022… 2023, before finally getting all of the calendars to overlap and lock. 

Throughout my life I have been abundantly blessed to be with musicians who get on my wavelength and can dream with me. Jason Moran and I speak a language together that is neither from Webster nor King James. It is drawn from a deep well of love for sound and a deep love for the mystery that lies in the search for that sound. Our hieroglyphs lie with Scriabin and Berg, Oum Kalthum and BaAka. Howlin’ Wolf and Monk. Bach and Bird. Prez and Lady Day. Ever since “The Water Is Wide,” Larry Grenadier has flowed in and out of my music. He brings the whole of the tradition coupled with a dancing, modern approach to his sound. His notes are robust anchors, while at the same time, allowing us to soar. Brian Blade is the new man in this forest of love. I had invited him to join me for a Town Hall performance during the Spring of 1997. When Master Higgins, who had a liver transplant 6 months earlier, heard about it, he told me he thought he was ready to travel to New York. Brian graciously bowed out of that performance. Over the next twenty plus years there were a handful of times we almost got together – it never happened until this recording. The joy and elevation he brings to the dance are reminiscent of Master Higgins. Selfless service. 

And so, All My Relations, my inclination to put down the saxophone and go back to the woods has been staved off for another season. This is my offering to you.              

—Yours in the music, CL

I had to stop writing to realize that Charles Lloyd had put heroism behind him. He’d developed a restlessness around what makes him whole, instead of known. I imagined the days of Charles Lloyd, in which discography is no real satisfaction, possessed by what he truly is. Able to tell Bird, Lady Day, and Booker Little that he’s at peace. 

The album had entered my psyche, finally, as what it is. Pastoral, noir, classical, romantic, assertive, concerned, vulnerable, for dancing, for singing along to. And so on. It told stories all the while knowing that, past its titles, it spoke no words. It was the mastery of sound, and freedom.

2020. Spring, in Santa Barbara, California, and its chickadees. Summer, and its “Naked Ladies” (Belladonna Amaryllis). Unsettled about the world, Charles first turned to Dorothy at their lunch table, and, as the seasons changed, together weaved a quartet of unrepressed sensibility. 

Jason Moran. Brian Blade. Larry Grenadier. The invitation extended to each flowered. Listen to the beginning of “Defiant, Tender Warrior,” then to the entire composition, the use of both thought and sentiment. Pay mind to the physicality required to play it. How each individual, as a quartet, articulates defiant, then warrior. Defiant warriors. Each instrument. Making shapes beyond any expectation. 

To Jason and Charles’s pursuit of symmetry, Brian offers asymmetry, guided by thinking on proportion and relation. To the ink brush beauty of Charles’s sax and flute, Larry offers a jarring, soul-lifting double bass, sensing phenomena, applying both heart and mathematics. The emotion of one is matched with the understanding of the other. Embodying that it is through heartfelt sense that we arrive at tender common sense. The intensity of Jason’s piano playing as confronting the stasis and rust of contemporary human beings accepted by all, each adding a bit of their understanding, and the emotions intrinsic to their understanding. The cyclical matches the cyclical in “Sky Valley, Spirit of The Forest”, gradually rising together, fitting existence into its fifteen-minute frame. 

Haunting. Majestic. Heights of melody, of harmony that carry us. Over a bridge, we go, into freedom, and wonder. As if this quartet built a kiln together, allowing their fires to burn at temperatures high enough to make form out of clay, their music takes on textures and colors that are not only composed but are also traces of the humor, the negotiations, the considerations in the practice of playing with each other that allowed for a flow of four freedoms. 

“The Lonely One” and “The Water is Rising” have a whole lot to teach to the English language. Words are built like chords, their syllables being notes. Rhetorics of hate, deceit, manipulation, and indifference are the chord progressions or compositions that often dominate life in the English language. How chords are constructed and deconstructed to harmonize with other chords and notes, as a dynamic and peaceful use of language, is the lesson. 

The tenderness to their flowing is the tradition all are in, imbued by the presence of “Ghost of Lady Day.” In an age when intellectuality walks hand in hand with irony, few choose to be compassionate with others with such thoughts. In the age of the gadfly, this is an education in living.

Knowledge of music making, of music theory, of how to use the instrument, is not all there is to music. There is also intuition, from pure experience of this world. The music of knowing thyself is perhaps the grand music for which we have no words, in front of which we are floored. 

As tenderness based on pure experience, of self, of space, of a fellow human, “The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow” is at the height of what a human being has the potential for making. As in “Ghost of Lady Day.” 

A word refers to a reality outside of itself, a note is itself. Notes can be heard in the currents of rivers, in the falling of rocks, and in the constant pollination of this world. When we assign words to describe music we create an illusion of knowing. 

Musical enlightenment is enlightenment in that we are fire, both matter and motion. As quantum physics tells us, matter is inseparable from motion. This fire, at a high enough temperature, is able to kiln form. To be a wild and tender fire, fundamentally moved, you allow yourself to be conditioned by the tenderness of this world. Furthermore, to be in this world, because in the end it is meant to be tender. The gentleness and humor that undergird this idea give this music its flair, and its lightness, despite the gravity that it chooses to address. 

Thus, “The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow.” The creator will be there tomorrow. There’s also that sky is in motion, allowing itself evolution, revolution, motion, and emotion, while remaining sky. We, along with all social life, are in motion, repressing ourselves from truly emoting, from opening up to other feelings, and other rationalities. Must we, then, look to the sky.

Who is Charles in all of this? What is this need to collaborate with others in this way, and make music that is such? Charles, a son of Tennessee, of the Choctaw. A child of tradition. Of front porches, of high humor, of old churches, of deep thought, enough to bend these traditions into the shape he’d like to give them. “Cape To Cairo” has that old Southern heart, as in the blues and in the civil rights movement, applied to writing a composition for Nelson Mandela. “Monk’s Dance” arrives at the ecstatic, the church’s ecstatic, without being in the shadow of its cross. The same for “Balm in Gilead” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” both made luminous.

The tradition, that of Prez, Bird, Lady Day, Booker, Coltrane, Lloyd, will never accept a fate given to it by ballrooms, white shoes, red lips, however beautiful in a black dress. It seeks sound to match its spirit, to fulfill its potential. Shorter dreamed of landscapes of regeneration. Coltrane spoke of a creator’s presence within every centimeter of every musical scale. Charles Lloyd dared to sing this culture, a culture enamored with the Brill Building, with minstrelsy, that had turned a love of Wagnerian tragedy into film soundtrack after soundtrack, that theatricality could never match spiritual existence, and people danced irreversibly.

Booker Little’s presence on this album because he is a cornerstone of the tradition. The tension heard in the composition is its beauty; without tension, there can be no individual, and thus no artist. Little’s mind embraced the tension of being enlightened, and in Charles’s words, “left town as an enlightened Soul” at the age of 23.

The Tradition. Enlightenment. Fire. Where to, Charles, Jason, Larry, Brian? In this part of the world, Sweet William lies dying on an old quilt, sad at his state, sad at his fate, Ma Rainey in tears on the other, as this society turns, turns, turns, in confusion. 

Charles and the quartet offer us renewal in convening, renewal in music, for a true, joyous, reciprocity based on that we are One, and luminous when entangled. To us, the world that is in disarray. Each of us is often so far from freedom. The reciprocities that allow for collective human life, between government and governed, music maker and dancer, prophet and assembled inadequate. An offering to reciprocate, with which to remake a world.

—Adolfo Alzuphar

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