On November 18^th, the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis was host to this amazing tribute, featuring the multi-talented Charles Lloyd, India’s master tablist Zakir Hussein, and young trap drum artist Eric Harland. Among selected venues, the Dakota is the only small jazz club on the current tour, along with a short list of theaters and concert halls around the nation. As a special event, the full seating area (including the dining room) was opened to the music, and every seat was filled for both sets. And without the usual din of adjacent dining room chatter, and in total deference to the mystical aura of the evening, the Dakota was as quiet a listening room as one could imagine, its fine acoustics displayed as never before since the club moved into the new space over a year ago.

The evening featured a multi-media exploration of the friendship and music of Lloyd and Higgins, beginning with a 20-minute excerpt from Dorothy Darr’s photo essay, Home. Filmmaker/ photographer Darr, who also happens to be married to Lloyd, shot hours of videotape as well as still photographs during Billy Higgins’ retreat at the Lloyd home in Big Sur. The resulting documentary captures conversations, musical experiments, and reflective moments between Lloyd and Higgins over those three months, and gracefully set the stage for the live music that followed. The film allows the audience to observe the very personal, spontaneous exchange of the creative process, as two master musicians experiment with a variety of ethnic instruments along with their traditional reeds and drums, and to listen as Lloyd reflects on Higgins, life, and music shortly after the drummer’s death from liver failure in May 2001. It could have been sappy or melodramatic, but Darr manages to capture the essence of both friendship and musical inspiration without such excesses. Like the subsequent music, the film is both spare and timeless.

The highlight of the evening was of course the musical offering to “Master Higgins,” as Lloyd referred to the man other artists remember as “Smilin’ Billy.” The recording (produced by Darr from the tapes made at Big Sur) features only Lloyd and Higgins. For most of the tour, including the night at the Dakota, this tribute ensemble has featured Zakir Hussein on tablas and various ethnic percussion, and Eric Harland on trap drums, percussion, and even piano, while Lloyd himself uses alto flute, tenor and alto sax, taragato (a wood Hungarian clarinet that sounds somewhat like a soprano sax), hand percussion, and piano. Further adding to the primal sonics were vocals, including Indian chants and songful repartee, mostly delivered by Hussein, with Harland and occasionally Lloyd joining in.

The entire hour-long set was presented as a suite with only brief pauses between units, and although none of the works were announced, the music comes from or is inspired by the Lloyd/Higgins collaborations forming Which Way Is East. One of the more interesting components of this music is the occasional use of the piano as a third percussion voice, alternatingly in the hands of Lloyd and Harland, or as was the case on the first segment, both. With Lloyd starting with a spare and dissonant solo line, Harland soon joined him on the piano bench, damping chords with his hands on the strings, eventually taking over the bassline duties with a tribal ostinato as Lloyd moved on to hand percussion and humming. Soon we were treated to a percussion trio that ever so slowly built in intensity, with Lloyd then moving on to the flute, all evolving into a hypnotic, eastern instrumental chant before suddenly reaching resolution. This framework—slowly building to climax, trading voices, interspersing vocalizations with percussion and reed, and quick resolution--was repeated over the set, variety coming from the different combinations of instruments, rhythms, and dynamics.