Legendary jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd has always operated at a tangent to the jazz mainstream. Coming to prominence in the 1960s with a progressive yet accessible mix of Coltrane-influenced post-bop and sunny soul-jazz, his quartet with drummer Jack DeJohnette, pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Cecil McBee achieved unlikely fame with the hippie counterculture and scored a massive hit with their 1966 album Forest Flower.
Lloyd largely dropped from sight in the 1970s and most of the 1980s, but he returned in 1989 with Fish Out of Water, revealing a mature sensitivity and an inclination towards ballads, and marking the beginning of his ongoing relationship with the iconic ECM label.
For his latest tour, Lloyd draws inspiration from Mirror, his 2010 release, and delivers a set of richly textured originals, standards (“I Fall in Love Too Easily”) and gospel tunes (“Go Down Moses”). His music is intense, mesmerizing and from the heart–reflecting decades-long spiritual exploration. For more than 50 years, Lloyd has created powerful music with jazz and world-beat luminaries such as Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock and master Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain. With The New Quartet, Lloyd has assembled a group able to follow his excursions into the music and into the mystic. Charles Lloyd New Quartet featuring Jason Moran, piano – Reuben Rogers, bass – Eric Harland, drums
His new release Athens Concert : The eminent Greek performer Maria Farantouri, encounters the «father of world music » and his new quartet in a concert that offers a remarkable and original combination of Greek traditional music and jazz. (Recorded in Athens and released by ECM.)
