Charles Lloyd, Enjoying the Comforts and Poetics of Home, at the Lobero

Charles Lloyd Delta Trio
Lobero Theatre
Santa Barbara, CA
March 14, 2025

Seasoned saxophonist Charles Lloyd, now 87 and alighting major stages, festivals and accolade zones around the world, is considered one of the last of the old school jazz legends standing—and going strong, in his mellowed, wise and distinctively voiced way. And yet, global and cosmic standing notwithstanding, some special alchemy settles in when Lloyd plays one of his long-standing "homecoming" gigs in the ideal ambience of Santa Barbara's Lobero Theatre. Lloyd, for decades a resident of the sylvan/affluent Montecito area of the Santa Barbara region, has been heading down the hill and downtown to the historic downtown haven of the Lobero, an intimate expansive living room-like space which celebrated its 150th birthday just last year.

For the 20th time in the past few decades, Lloyd settled into the familiar room on March 14, one day before his birthday. Past Lobero shows have included a momentous 80th birthday which was recorded live for his 8: Kindred Spirits (Live from the Lobero) album on Blue Note. Another important Lloyd/Lobero evening occurred in 2008, when Lloyd made a live recording of his first meeting with the now belated tabla master Zakir Hussain and drummer Eric Harland, under the rubric of the "Sangam" trio. In another familiar—and familial—touch, Lloyd's artist wife/manager Dorothy Darr supplied a montage-dance of painted and filmed visuals on the large screen behind the musicians.

In live shows, Lloyd mostly tends to lean on a familiar songbook (while generally avoiding his best-known tune, "Forest Flower," for some reason) but presented in shifting instrumental contexts. This time out, Lloyd eased into the something comfortable of a particularly empathetic new threesome, the bass-less and drum-less Delta Trio, with his ever-versatile and long-standing ally Jason Moran on piano and guitarist Marvin Sewell—one of jazz' greatest "talents deserving wider recognition." Sewell commanded much attention via his embedded subtlety, fluidity and adaptability to whatever setting he finds himself in, such as in Lloyd's aesthetic corner. The pair made a fateful connection in a tribute to Hussain at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, and one hopes the connection progresses forward.

This is not to mention Sewell's natural ken for slipping into tasteful but undeniably bluesy "Delta-phonic" patois, tapping into slide guitar and a nod to "Come On in My Kitchen" in mid-set. Lloyd summoned up his own blues-tinged lineage (he played with Bobby Blue Bland, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King and other blues legends in his hometown of Memphis), on the tender tonality of his flute, on the tune "Blues for Langston." But such Saturday night-coded antics came only after a reverential opening agenda, with a double shot of moving Lloyd-arranged hymns, "Abide with Me" and the James Weldon Johnson's inspiring hymn/Black life anthem "Lift Every Voice." Duration, musical interactions and pulse remained open and impressionistic, in the soulful elasticity mode—with nods to John Coltrane, in a lighter way—which has marked much of Lloyd's music since the 1960s.

An understated atmosphere continued into the waltz "Evanstide, Where Lotus Bloom" from Lloyd's 1995 ECM album All My Relations, but nudged upward into a rattled intensity for "Part 5 Ruminations," from 8: Kindred Spirits, on which Lloyd's earlier flotational sax tone and lines grew more edgy, restless and more definitively Coltrane-tinged. Other echoes of past Lobero shows emerged during the concert, as when Lloyd called up the rumbling and rambling "Ghost of Lady Day"—recorded on last year's album The Sky Will Still be There Tomorrow, and featuring the rhythm section of Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Brian Blade, the band appearing at Lloyd's 85th birthday Lobero show in 2023.

Also heard in his Lobero @ 80 concert and album, the sweetly melancholic Mexican folk song "La Llorona" served as a graceful set-closing vehicle for Moran's probing palette and the imploring balladic persona of Lloyd's musical voice.

To open the encore portion of the evening, Lloyd took brief detours from his mainstay tenor sax to perform on instruments long associated with his concerts, the Hungarian tárogató reed instrument on "Nachekita's Lament," and some maraca action flexed into the piano microphones during Moran's solo. Another aspect of the Lloyd ethos, his Vedantic spiritual practice, emerged as he recited from memory from the Bhagavad-Gita, in Christopher Isherwood's celebrated translation.

Strictly American turf was just around the corner, though, as Lloyd closed out a contemplative and full musical evening to his revised treatment of the Leonard Berstein/Stephen Sondheim ballad "Somewhere." Via Lloyd's characteristic vocal and lyrical style of phrasing and gently altering melodies, especially when dealing with such familiar terrain as Beach Boys / Brian Wilson songs and standards, our mind's ear detected found comfort in the saxophonist's implied lyric: "there's a place for us / somewhere a place for us."

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