ECM Releases Charles Lloyd's 2-CD Set "Lift Every Voice"

Charles Lloyd: tenor saxophone, flute, taragato
Geri Allen: piano
John Abercrombie: guitar
Marc Johnson: double-bass
Larry Grenadier: double-bass
Billy Hart: drums

ECM 1832/33 (2-CD-Set 440 018 783-2)

Charles Lloyd introduces a new line-up, or line-ups, on Lift Every Voice. The recording derives from two sessions in Los Angeles in January and February of this year. The first employed the services of pianist Geri Allen (making her ECM debut), Larry Grenadier and Billy Hart, the second Allen, John Abercrombie, Marc Johnson and Hart. (For live work in varying contexts, Lloyd is now pooling permutations of these musicians).

As for the far-reaching program of original material, spirituals, folk songs, hymns, standards, love songs and protest songs on this double album, it is in part Lloyd's response to the cataclysmic events of last September. Charles Lloyd had been due to open at the Blue Note in New York on Tuesday, September 11th. Lloyd, Allen, Abercrombie, Grenadier and Hart had to wait till the Friday to take the stage while the city struggled to absorbed what had happened, and the media stepped up its East versus West rhetoric...

Lloyd's wife and co-producer Dorothy Darr writes, “as the days and months passed after leaving New York City, Charles found solace in spirituals and in songs like Silvio Rodriguez