Charles Lloyd: Figure In Blue

Jazz listeners with long memories will remember that Charles Lloyd was not always as revered as he is today. In the 1960s, his association with the "Summer of Love" and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene led some to question his seriousness, seeing him as flirting with commercialism. Six decades on, that perception has aged away. Lloyd's work in 2025 is almost comparable to Beethoven's late quartets—music of depth, reflection, and spiritual weight. He has passed beyond being a national treasure; he is an international one.

The applause of the sixties faded, and Lloyd retreated to Big Sur on the California coast, semi-retired and seeking silence. Then, in 1982, a young Michel Petrucciani appeared at his door.

"When Michel came knocking," Lloyd recalled, "I realized the elders had always helped me—so I needed to help him." Hearing the pianist play, Lloyd reportedly said, "I have to take you 'round the world because there's something so beautiful." Their meeting sparked a five- year collaboration and three recordings, a fruitful renewal that reconnected Lloyd with the musical world.

A strong Duke Ellington current runs through this album. Lloyd was in Antibes in 1966 at the same time as the Ellington orchestra when Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges and Harry Carney invited him to visit the statue of Sidney Bechet. "I was honored that they heard something in my sound that made them want to share the experience with me," he later said. "It was an initiation, a benediction."

"Heaven," from Ellington's Sacred Concerts—originally written for Alice Babs and Johnny Hodges—appears here, alongside another Hodges feature, "Black Butterfly." Both pieces link Lloyd's tone to a lineage of lyrical, alto-centered beauty within jazz history. Lloyd revisits "The Ghost of Lady Day," first recorded on an earlier album. Billie Holiday, whose haunting emotional honesty reshaped jazz singing, remains a guiding spirit. Lloyd's horn carries that same vulnerability, saturated with melancholy. Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell deepen the mood, Sewell's keening tone capturing a sorrow that feels both personal and historical.

The album opens with "Abide With Me," a hymn chosen for its quiet spirituality—fitting for Lloyd's late style. There's a playful subtext here too: Thelonious Monk once jokingly presented the hymn when asked for a Monk piece he'd never played before, written, as he noted, by "Monk"—William Henry Monk (1861).

A surprise comes at the close: "Somewhere" from West Side Story. Stripped of its lyrics and Broadway gloss, Lloyd's reading is deliberate and luminous, its beauty intensified by understatement.

Since 2007, Moran has been one of Lloyd's most instinctive partners. He brings sinew and structure to Lloyd's floating lyricism. The lineage of great Lloyd pianists—Keith Jarrett, Michel Petrucciani, Bobo Stenson, Brad Mehldau, Geri Allen—finds a worthy successor in Moran, whose blend of empathy and adventurousness perfectly matches his leader's spiritual candor.

Their interplay feels conversational: carefully phrased, elastic, intuitively responsive. Moran's command of classical, avant-garde, and modern idioms enriches the dialogue without overshadowing Lloyd's storytelling tone.

"Ruminations" highlights Sewell's tender side, his exchanges with Moran unfolding with meditative grace. It contrasts sharply with his fiery, bottleneck-driven playing on "Chulahoma," a homage to Mississippi bluesman Junior Kimbrough. "Blues for Langston" builds from reflection into a warm groove, Sewell's slide lines intertwining with Lloyd's flute in earthy communion.

D.H. Lawrence titled one of his poem sequences "Look! We Have Come Through!" Lloyd could claim the same. His recent run of Blue Note albums forms a spiritual and musical diary, charting his journey through loss, renewal, and gratitude. This latest recording feels like a summation—a deeply felt meditation on the artists and traditions that have shaped his singular sound.

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