Charles Lloyd | News | Infotext: Charles Lloyd - Trio of Trios

Saxophonist Charles Lloyd ist musikalischer Freigeist und Visionär, seit mehr als sechs Jahrzehnten Unikum der internationalen Musikszene und mit 84 Jahren noch immer im Vollbesitz seiner kreativen Kräfte. So produktiv wie eh und je veröffentlichte Lloyd 2020 mit „8: Kindred Spirits“ ein Live-Album, das sich in zahlreichen Album-Bestenlisten des Jahres wiederfand, aufgenommen anlässlich seines 80. Geburtstag im Jahr 2018.

 2021 erschien das Album „Tone Poem“, das dritte Werk seines Ensembles Charles Lloyd & The Marvels, einem genreübergreifenden Quintett mit Bill Frisell an der Gitarre, Greg Leisz an der Pedal Steel-Gitarre, Reuben Rogers am Bass und Eric Harland am Schlagzeug.

Mit „Trios: Chapel“ eröffnete Charles Lloyd im Juli 2022 ein ungewöhnliches Trio-Projekt, das insgesamt drei thematisch zusammenhängende Alben umfasst, die ihn jeweils in einer anderen Trio-Besetzung präsentieren – ein „Trio of Trios“. Das erste Album nahm er mit Gitarrist Bill Frisell und Bassist Thomas Morgan auf, das zweite Album „Ocean“ mit Gitarrist Anthony Wilson und Pianist Gerald Clayton, das dritte, „Sacred Thread“ (erscheint am 18. November), mit Gitarrist Julian Lage und Schlagzeuger Zakir Hussain.   

Charles Lloyd has long been a free spirit, master musician, and visionary. For more than six decades the legendary saxophonist and composer has loomed large over the music world, and at 84 years old he remains both at the height of his powers and as prolific as ever. Early on Lloyd saw how placing the improvised solo in interesting and original contexts could provoke greater freedom of expression and inspire creativity.

 As a sound seeker, Lloyd’s restless creativity has perhaps found no greater manifestation than on his latest masterwork, an expansive project that encompasses three individual albums each presenting him in a different trio setting—a Trio of Trios. The first, Trios: Chapel, features Lloyd with guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan. The second, Trios: Ocean, with guitarist Anthony Wilson and pianist Gerald Clayton. The third, Trios: Sacred Thread, with guitarist Julian Lage and percussionist Zakir Hussain.

Lloyd once pointed out that his playing was a reflection of his life in real time. Perhaps this explains the emotional power of his playing, a soulful cry from the heart that argues for peace and beauty in a world becoming increasingly impatient with both. It’s why his saxophone tone, his signature in sound, is central to his art.  “I’m trying to get a great sound, because when I think of all the great masters that went before, this kid in me still sees areas where I come up short and I continue to work on it,” he says. Unique and expressive, it’s what draws listeners into his music, shaping the emotive elements of his performances, from passionate intensity to sotto voce subtones, from which we construe meaning. 

With good reason Lloyd’s playing has been described as lyrical, a style that is evocative of singing, expressing a subjective, personal point of view. Indeed, as a child he wanted to train as a singer, and today, when he plays a ballad, such as his recent recording of ‘Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen on Tone Poem, he has spoken of how knowing a song’s lyrics helps him add greater expressive weight to his playing. It is a reminder of music’s ancient connection with words and how melody frequently follows the meter and rhythm of speech patterns. Formalized a thousand years ago with the diatonicism of plainsong, music’s evolution through chromaticism to what has been called “the crisis in tonality” precipitated by Arnold Schoenberg, was mirrored in jazz in the space of just fifty years. So much has been accomplished in music that today, the search for the “always new” that propelled jazz through the twentieth century has given way to the realization to the once witty riposte by arch-modernist and surrealist Man Ray in the 1920s — “I can’t do something better than the old masters did, my only justification is to do something different.”

One way of achieving Man’s point of difference in jazz is changing the backdrop to the improviser’s art, since context has the effect of enhancing and transforming meaning — as Offred reminds us in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaiden’s Tale, “Context is all.” Atwood’s words could well be the leitmotif for Charles Lloyd’s career. It is something that he’s spent a lifetime exploring, for example, the quartets he led with pianists Keith Jarrett, Michel Petrucciani, Bobo Stenson, Geri Allen, and Jason Moran, each of whom was of a different poetic caste, helped shape the destiny of his music in different ways, each a wind of change that inspired new beginnings and new directions.

In later years this challenge deepened  as Lloyd began experimenting with different instrumental combinations, each bringing a change of tone and texture to his music,  such as a septet with vocalist Maria Farantouri plus his regular quartet augmented by lyra player Socratis Sinopoulos and second pianist Takis Farazis, with his groups The Marvels and Sangam, and latterly with his Trio of Trios project — three different trios  of three different instrumental permutations each with strong yet simpatico musical personalities contributing to the ultimate destiny of the music.

It should come as no surprise that each of the configurations that feature in the Trio of Trios set involve a deft change of musical context. Borrowing author Antonio Di Benedetto’s apposite term, these trios of expectation open with the Chapel Trio, named after its inaugural performance in December, 2018, at Coates Chapel in San Antonio.

Frisell had already cemented his relationship with Lloyd as a charter member of The Marvels when he was invited by Lloyd to join him in a special concert at Coates Chapel on the Southwest School of Arts campus in San Antonio at the end of 2018. Lloyd was already familiar with the acoustic properties of the chapel, and knew it would not support drums or percussion. He was also aware of Frisell had recorded in a duo context with Morgan, with whom he had developed a close musical rapport, and suggested they might all come together as a trio.

Recorded live, for a while it seemed as if the Coates concert would become maiden voyage and farewell tour all in one. The global pandemic brought the world to a standstill for the best part of two years, but in December 2021 the trio were reunited for a concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, suggesting they may continue to sprinkle their magic into the future. Even so, the Coates concert left an indelible impression on Lloyd, who later said, “Our first performance has always had a magical place in my memory bank.”

And magical it was. Opening with Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count,” originally a feature for the late Johnny Hodges with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, it is a performance that can only be described as heartfelt. Lloyd’s mother ran a rooming house in Memphis, and Lloyd’s childhood memories are filled with impressions of musicians from the touring big bands who stayed there — the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, and Duke Ellington’s Famous Orchestra especially. His memories of meeting Johnny Hodges as a youngster are particularly vivid. While the present thinks it knows it all, the past — here in terms of memories, dreams, and reflections — had a casting vote in shaping the destiny of this performance.

Frisell’s accompaniment is perfect for this trio setting; the essence of his unique sound signature lies less in what he does, more the manner in which he does it. He introduces “Song My Lady Sings,” a Lloyd original dating from 1966, allowing Morgan to share the foreground before Lloyd’s entrance outlining the graceful melody that mutates into a series of eloquent musical arabesques that culminate in a double-time coda and the realization this has been Lloyd’s finest performance of the song. “Ay Amor” is by the Cuban singer, songwriter, and pianist Bola de Nieve, born Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández (1911–71), who was a top cabaret singer and a composer fluent in many languages. His version of “Ay Amor” was recorded in Spanish as a rhapsodic lament. Lloyd obliquely acknowledges the composer’s intent in his exposition of the melody before re-imagining it in new contours, subtly implying the exotic in terms of melody and rhythm as he claims the song as his own.

The unspoken rule about the trio’s collective improvisation seems to be that no-one refuses what another proposes, so that “Beyond Darkness,” featuring Lloyd on flute, begins as a fractured melodic line, but as it is embellished, extended, and developed it grows into a pinnacle of dramatic possibilities, climaxed by a flute cadenza as coda. “Dorotea’s Studio” is the workspace of Lloyd’s partner and soul mate, Dorothy Darr. Introduced by Frisell, Lloyd’s exposition of the melody to an implied Latin rhythm is developed through a series of motifs, inversions, and inter-connecting phrases that are here, perhaps, richer and more varied, forming the basis of a graceful climax to a memorable concert.

The Ocean Trio, one of three configurations documented in the Trio of Trios trilogy, was recorded in the 150-year-old Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara, California, in Lloyd’s hometown (where he has played more than any venue, and more than any other artist). It was live streamed on September 9, 2020, during the first year of the global pandemic, so there is no audience. Lloyd was joined by Gerald Clayton on piano and Anthony Wilson on guitar, both sons of famous musician fathers — Clayton the son of West Coast bass legend John Clayton, while Anthony Wilson is the son of celebrated band leader, trumpeter, composer and arranger Gerald Wilson, in whose big band Lloyd once played when he moved from Memphis to study at the University of Southern California when in his teens.

Lloyd began his performance with an original, “Lonely One,” his saxophone entering on a zephyr-like breeze that sets the mood, key and tempo as Clayton and Wilson’s accompaniment coalesces around him. The mood is ruminative yet mysterious, suggestive of times lost — the shadow cast by the pandemic is a long one — but it also something more. We are all from somewhere, and part of the artist’s quest is to explore that somewhere, how it has shaped the inner person and what can be creatively channeled into the present.  Feelings and moods are what this album is about —   the introduction to “Hagar of the Inuits” feints and teases as it finds its way into a “blues tinged” groove with Wilson’s guitar solo, in particular, perfectly framing the moment.

The blues have always been woven into Lloyd’s musical vocabulary, its influence, sometimes overt, sometimes covert both occurring in “Jaramillo Blues,” which is dedicated to the painter, Virginia Jaramillo and her husband, sculptor Daniel Johnson, can be traced back through a precise timeline that leads back to his teens, playing alongside such blues masters Howlin’ Wolf, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and B. B. King. This is a blues of an optimistic hue — Clayton’s bright, rootless chords providing an introduction to Lloyd’s flute, who sets mood and tone of the performance.

“Kuan Yin” evolves from mysterious openings by Clayton, one hand inside the piano dampening lower strings creating a percussive from the lower keyboard where the destination of the song is unclear until a variation of a rhumba rhythm opens into minor key exoticism. Lloyd is at his most animated during this finale, while Clayton and Wilson capture his mood and intention perfectly. Clayton’s solo climaxes and, like a director’s soft dissolve, six notes from Lloyd brings the trio’s performance to a conclusion. Nothing more needed be said, but so too nothing can be taken away without destroying the narrative arc of the performance. It is complete, an aural photograph of a moment in time along Lloyd’s path into the heart of meaning.

On November 18, Charles Lloyd will release Trios: Sacred Thread, the third and final album in his Trio of Trios series, an expansive project that presents the legendary saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master in three different trio settings. Trios: Sacred Thread, which features Lloyd with guitarist Julian Lage and percussionist Zakir Hussain, is previewed today with the spellbinding single “Desolation Sound.”

Past experiences often illuminate the present in Lloyd’ music, for example, the provenance of The Sacred Thread — and the encounters that helped inform it — originated in the late fifties: “When I was studying at the University of Southern California, Ravi Shankar and Alla Rakha used to come around,” he recalls.  “That’s when I heard the call of Mother India —  not only the music, but poets like Tagore and the saints such as Milarepa. Later, I found my way to Ramakrishna and Vedanta. I was also deeply moved by Ali Akbar Khan, the sarod player. His sons Ashish and Pranesh are on my album, Geeta.” Released in 1973, it was described by Billboard as, “Indian music blending cogently with free flowing modern jazz.”

“Zakir and I played together in concert for the first time in 2001,” says Lloyd, “and it was then I learned Alla Rakha was his father, whom I saw playing with Ravi Shankar at USC, so it has been like that… connections on a journey. You could call it Providence, I call it a Sacred Thread.”

“I first heard young Julian when he was 12,” Lloyd continues. “He grew up not far from Healdsburg and was known to be a wunderkind — he had big ears and I heard his potential. Twenty years later I invited him to join me – he’s still a young man and his ears have only grown bigger. So — I keep being blessed by souls who find a way to me, it still inspires me to go out on the high wire and try to fly.”

On September 26, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Lloyd streamed a concert for a virtual audience at The Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg, California. Joined by Hussain and Lage, Lloyd observed, “While the energy and exchange between musicians and audience is gone, there is a concentration and focus that is not interrupted by applause.”

 

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