Charles Lloyd – Figure In Blue

 

CD 1

 

1. Abide With Me – 2:51
   (Traditional, arranged by Charles Lloyd)
2. Hina Hanta, the way of peace – 7:50 (Charles Lloyd)
3. Figure In Blue, memories of Duke – 7:13
   (Charles Lloyd)
4. Desolation Sound – 5:50
   (Charles Lloyd)
5. Ruminations – 10:39

(Charles Lloyd)

6. Chulahoma – 5:04
   (Charles Lloyd)
7. Song My Lady Sings – 8:32
   (Charles Lloyd)

 

 

 

CD 2

 

1. The Ghost of Lady Day – 10:27
   (Charles Lloyd)
2. Blues for Langston – 8:17
   (Charles Lloyd)
3. Heaven – 6:16
   (Duke Ellington)
4. Black Butterfly – 9:05
   (Duke Ellington/Irving Mills/Ben Carruthers)
5. Ancient Rain – 1:51
   (Charles Lloyd)
6. Hymn To The Mother, for Zakir – 9:27
   (Charles Lloyd)
7. Somewhere – 4:34
   (Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim )

 

Charles Lloyd: Tenor Saxophone – Jason Moran: Piano – Marvin Sewell: Guitar

Zu seinem 87. Geburtstag trat der legendäre Jazz-Saxofonist und Flötist Charles Lloyd im März 2025 mit einem neuen Trio im Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara auf. Direkt im Anschluss ging er mit dem Pianisten Jason Moran und dem Gitarristen Marvin Sewell ins Studio, um sein zwölftes Blue Note-Album, „Figure In Blue“, aufzunehmen. Das Doppelalbum gibt Lloyd Raum für eine musikalische Reise zu den Personen und Einflüssen, die seine Karriere gepägt haben, mit wunderschönen Balladen und rohen Delta-Blues bis zu tief empfundenen Hommagen an Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday und Zakir Hussain.

CHARLES LLOYD ARTIST BIO

Converse with the saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd — a titan of an improviser, still digging deep onstage at age 87 — and you will inevitably arrive at this subject: gratitude.

He generously bestows his gratitude in multiple directions: upon his musical heroes, his beloved collaborators, and the spirits that lift him up and guide his breath through his horn. To hear Lloyd describe his work, he sees himself less as a singular virtuoso and more as a benevolent conduit — for spiritual and musical history, for fellowship, for hope.

Lloyd’s new Blue Note double album, Figure In Blue, might be his most heartfelt expression yet – a reflection of all that has defined his life. Throughout a program of new original music, reinvigorated older works, and other choice selections, he demonstrates his love for pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell, his fellow travelers in a new trio, and pays homage to the musicians and influences that have shaped him. These include the late tabla master Zakir Hussain, Lloyd’s co-voyager in the trio Sangam; Duke Ellington; Billie Holiday; his Choctaw heritage; and the deep blues that Lloyd cut his teeth on, gigging with B.B. King, Howlin’ Wolf and other legends during his formative years in Memphis.

The result is one of the most musically stunning and personally meaningful recordings of Lloyd’s career. In it, you can hear a kind of memoir unfold at the same time the saxophonist puts forth a candid document of his undiminished strength. As he nears his tenth decade, his tone and technique are, as ever, equally mighty and ethereal, delivering startling intensity even in moments of meditative quiet. A closing “Somewhere,” from West Side Story, is easily one of the most affecting takes on Leonard Bernstein’s melody ever put to tape.

This trio is a study in ensemble empathy — a clinic in knowing when to play and when to listen — owing to both experience and shared Southern roots. Moran, a generation-defining pianist who was born and raised in Houston, Texas, has been one of Lloyd’s most important collaborators for nearly two decades. “We arrive at the heart of the matter with very few words,” Lloyd says of their kinship.

Sewell has joined Lloyd onstage in various configurations, including a trio with pianist Gerald Clayton, and he’s of a piece with the comprehensive range of Lloyd and Moran’s musicianship. To say it another way, Sewell’s bag is bottomless: Trained in classical piano and jazz guitar, Sewell also plays bottleneck Delta blues with soul-stirring veracity. “Marvin has an authentic voice,” Lloyd says, going on to explain how Sewell’s playing can transport him to his own musical beginnings in postwar Tennessee. “Marvin grew up in Chicago but has family ties to the Mississippi Delta, and knows from first-hand experience the trials and tribulations we experienced on the red clay of the South. You can hear it in his playing.”

In fact, to hear these three natural bluesmen in communion, interpreting America’s musical baseline on “Blues for Langston” and “Chulahoma,” is one of the album’s unadulterated joys. The latter track is especially compelling, an ecstatic union of spiritual jazz and Son House. It also underscores one of the central lessons that Lloyd absorbed from the blues greats he supported: “Project to the back of the room,” he says, “whether it is a juke joint in the Mississippi Delta or a white dancehall in West Memphis, Arkansas — or Carnegie Hall.”

What’s more, Sewell’s sound and approach can call to mind other players who are part of Lloyd’s astonishing legacy of guitarists. Listen for the narrative phrasing of Gábor Szabó and John Abercrombie; the crystalline tone and swirling electronics of Bill Frisell; the windblown swells of pedal-steel master Greg Leisz.

Every track on Figure In Blue relates a rich story. Perhaps the most poignant tale here arrives with “Hymn to the Mother, for Zakir,” a celestial, atmospheric tribute to Hussain, who died last year at age 73. Onstage with drummer Eric Harland in Sangam, Lloyd and the tabla virtuoso would unfailingly rise to hit a transcendent peak, then stay there for the duration of the evening. Their relationship began with a duo concert that took place a few weeks after 9/11, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral — “a place where Dr. King and Duke Ellington held forth,” Lloyd points out. “I was struck by Zakir’s warmth and soulfulness.”

“‘Hymn to the Mother,’” he continues, “is a piece I have been performing for many decades now — and had performed at every concert with Zakir. When we went into the studio, losing him was still very fresh. I wanted to start the recording session with an offering to him.”

In many ways, Lloyd is still processing his friend’s passing. “I miss everything about Zakir,” he says. “His friendship, his humanity, his humor, his deep understanding of the whole thing. He was a deeply spiritual Being. This was an unspeakable loss for me.”

The album’s title comes from another paean, this time to Ellington. Alongside Lloyd’s “Figure in Blue, memories of Duke,” which seamlessly pushes light against dark and gentle grooves against rubato, the trio tackles the maestro’s “Black Butterfly” and “Heaven.” In addition to a lifetime of musical inspiration, Lloyd had deeply impactful personal interactions with Ellington and his band — first in Memphis, where his mother ran a boarding house that hosted touring musicians, and many years later in France.

“When Duke and I were in Antibes at the same time in 1966, he was very encouraging to me and said, ‘If you keep stirring the soup, one day you’ll have something,’” Lloyd remembers. “[Ellington saxophonists] Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney invited me to go with them to the gravesite of the great Sidney Bechet — the progenitor of the saxophone. I was honored that they heard something in my sound that made them want to share the experience with me. It was an initiation, a benediction.”

Lloyd’s “Hina Hanta, the way of peace” is as gorgeous as a golden-age Broadway ballad but takes its spirit from a much older source, invoking the Choctaw, an American Indian tribe of the Southeastern U.S. More specifically, it calls upon the strength and resilience that Lloyd has found in his own Choctaw ancestry. “My great-grandmother, Sallie Sunflower Whitecloud, refused to walk the Trail of Tears and became enslaved so that she could stay at my great-grandfather’s side,” he explains. “She was a wise woman who knew many things about the natural world. She has shown me a path that is in a fragile balance and must be respected. I have her songs in my heart.”

“The Ghost of Lady Day” is a solemn eulogy that captures Billie Holiday’s brilliant complexities as it reflects on Lloyd’s boyhood infatuation with this troubled genius of American song. “She was my everything,” Lloyd says, “and I knew from her anguished tone that she understood everything about my loneliness and neglect. She gave me something to live for — the day when I could go to New York City and rescue her from her anguish and sorrow. I didn’t get there in time.”

Charles Lloyd has done career-defining work in unconventional trio lineups, including Sangam and the more recent recordings collected in the trilogy Trio of Trios. But Figure In Blue stands alone, breaking new ground in the way of harmony, patience, and generosity. By projecting his reverence outward, Lloyd becomes luminous.

 

Konzerte

Charles Lloyd Sky Quartet with Jason Moran, Larry Grenadier and Eric Harland

18.11.2025     Enjoy Jazz – Mannheim

21.11.2025     Hamburg, Elbphilharmonie

 

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