Charles Lloyd Quartet
Released March 7, 2008
JazzTimes Album of the Year 2008
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/6BYkyf5GEbnMdOIFhlrTRk?si=kRC2hzfzRua_cV6hbXDDHQ
About:
In verse written specially for this release, Charles Simic (currently Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress) pinpoints the poles of Charles Lloyd’s unique musical personality. On the one hand, the metropolitan jazzman, taking the music further, with the greatest respect for the tradition: “Late night talk / On a tenor / With the dead / And the shadows they cast.” On the other, the flute player of the forests and the mountain: “Voice of solitude. / Voice of insomnia. / Call of a night bird. / Continuous prayer.” Charles Lloyd represents both of these positions, and the ‘rural’ and the ‘city’ aspects of his music are again in evidence on “Rabo de Nube”.
This live album, recorded in Basel in 2007, is issued in time for Charles’s 70th birthday on March 15, 2008. The disc introduces the newest edition of the Lloyd Quartet, with Jason Moran on piano and Reuben Rogers on bass joining Charles and drummer Eric Harland (both Moran and Rogers making their ECM debuts here). The work doesn’t stop, even for birthday celebrations, and just as Lloyd has continued to refine his sound as a player so he continues to shape his group music, always encouraging the players – in this case musicians half his age – to find their own space inside it.
“Rabo de Nube” (Tail of a Cloud) is named for the tune by Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez which concludes the performance here, a beautiful ballad that has long been a favourite of Lloyd’s. It makes its second appearance in his ECM discography, having previously appeared on “Lift Every Voice”, recorded in 2002. All other tunes are Lloyd originals and include the vintage “Sweet Georgia Bright”, a piece that Charles first recorded in 1964, both with his own band and with Cannonball Adderley’s group, and which, with its driving momentum, has been a concert favourite ever since. The Basel concert opens with “Prometheus”, which seems to borrow some of “Georgia Bright”’s fire. “Migration of Spirit” is a big, radiant tenor meditation. “Booker’s Garden”, in memory of childhood friend Booker Little, is a cheery tribute with the alto flute. The tarogato comes to the fore in “Ramanujan”, a piece whose non-specific tribal pulses tap into a universal folk-dance that has belonged to the ambit of Lloyd’s music since at least the late 60s and “Journey Within.” Its open form encourages some swirling piano responses from Moran, who gets back to the roots on “La Colline de Monk”, which, in turn, leads to “Sweet Georgia”. In all, “Rabo de Nube”, the album, gives a good account of the scope of Charles Lloyd’s music today.
Track Listing:
1. Prometheus (Charles Lloyd) 14:42
2. Migration of Spirit (Charles Lloyd) 10:14
3. Booker’s Garden (Charles Lloyd) 14:32
4. Ramanujan (Charles Lloyd) 11:38
5. La Colline de Monk (Charles Lloyd) 4:01
6. Sweet Georgia Bright (Charles Lloyd) 12:16
7. Rabo de Nube (Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez / Silvio Rodríguez) 7:36
Personnel:
Charles Lloyd: tenor saxophone, alto flute, tarogato
Jason Moran: piano
Reuben Rogers: double-bass
Eric Harland: drums, percussion
Recorded April 27, 2007, at Theater Basel
Produced by Charles Lloyd
Executive-Producer: Manfred Eicher
Engineer: Adam Camardella, Dominic Camardella
Mastering: Bernie Grundman
Photography: Dorothy Darr
Cover Design: Sascha Kleis
Review:
Since returning to music in 1989 Charles Lloyd has made 13 recordings for ECM. They constitute one of the most important bodies of work in jazz of the last two decades. The newest, Rabo De Nube, is Lloyd’s first live quartet recording for ECM, his first album with Jason Moran, and one of his finest achievements.
Lloyd’s ensembles have always included very strong pianists like Keith Jarrett, Michel Petrucciani, Bobo Stenson and Brad Mehldau. None have been as creatively volatile as Moran, whose percussive densities might seem incompatible with Lloyd’s fluid, often tender tenor saxophone. But Lloyd makes Moran more lyrical, and Moran makes Lloyd wilder.
It is precisely wild lyricism that this concert (recorded in Basel, Switzerland in April 2007) is about. The opening “Prometheus” introduces the aesthetic. Lloyd, alone and possessed, oscillates upward, and is carried on the swirling polyrhythms of bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland; Moran enters and slams block chords of a separate song and then fixates on shattering trills; Rogers, suddenly out front, cries an arco bass lament that flows into an evolving Moran solo (quiet to loud, slow to quick, spare to complex) followed by a patient, detailed Harland drum revelation. Each piece is many things.
Lloyd recorded Silvio Rodriguez’s title track once before, in 2002, on Lift Every Voice. There its yearning poignance was gentle and contained. On the live 2007 version, Moran begins softly too but his passion builds and spills over, and Lloyd’s rendering of the aching melody-loose, searching, sometimes tentative-is soul-baring exposure in the living moment.
Lloyd should make more live albums, and more albums with Jason Moran.
Thomas Conrad (JazzTimes)
