Charls Lloyd Quartet

SF Jazz will present Charles Lloyd's 70th Birthday Celebration on Friday, March 28, 8PM at the Herbst Theatre 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister), in San Francisco. This latest incarnation of the Charles Lloyd Quartet includes the brilliant Jason Moran on piano and Reuben Rogers on bass joining Charles and drummer Eric Harland. Their new live album “Rabo de Nube”, recorded in 2007, was just released - in time for Charles’s 70th birthday on March 15, 2008.

During the early 1960's Charles Lloyd recorded two albums as a leader with other young musicians including Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Following that Lloyd led a quartet with pianist Keith Jarrett, bassist Cecil McBee (afterwards, Ron McClure), and drummer Jack DeJohnette whose music was an groundbreaking fusion of straight-ahead post-bop, free jazz, and soul jazz. They also achieved a significant amount of crossover success with rock fans and became the first jazz group to play in the Fillmore. SInce 1989, Lloyd has toured actively and recorded for the ECM label. These recordings reveal Lloyd's depth and sensitivity as a ballad player - particularly on Voice in the Night, The Water Is Wide (featuring Brad Mehldau, John Abercrombie and Billy Higgins) and Lift Every Voice (featuring Geri Allen).

Jason Moran

Memphis-born Lloyd has played with some exceptional pianists in the course of his long career, starting with Phineas Newborn in his home town, with Joe Zawinul in the Cannonball Adderley group, and with Keith Jarrett, whom Lloyd introduced in his pioneering group of the 1960s. Subsequent Lloyd quartet pianists have included Michel Petrucciani, Bobo Stenson, Brad Mehldau, and Geri Allen. Jason Moran is a perfect addition to Lloyd's quartet. As the New York Times once observed, Moran reaches both further back in the jazz tradition and further outside it than most of his contemporaries. His strongly chordal approach and his percussive originality took off from an early interest in Thelonious Monk, but Moran (born 1975) studied with three great teachers – Jaki Byard, Andrew Hill, and Muhal Richard Abrams – who encouraged him to find his own path. He has recorded a number of critically-acclaimed albums as a leader, won a number of prizes including the Jazz Journalists Association’s Pianist of the Year Award, and performed with many great musicians from Wayne Shorter to Lee Konitz.

One of Moran’s classmates at Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts was drummer Eric Harland, who would later make the connections that would bring Moran and Greg Osby together, an important point in the pianist’s biography, setting the stage for his association with Blue Note records. In the quartet with Lloyd, Moran and Harland have a wealth of shared history to draw on, an underlying factor in the strengths of this particular unit.

Charles Lloyd with Reuben Rogers & Eric Harland - photo by Scott Williams

Reuben Rogers, born in the Virgin Islands in 1974, played clarinet, guitar and drums before settling on the double-bass as his instrument of choice. In his Caribbean homeland he grew up exposed to calypso and reggae as well as jazz and some of that music’s dancing swing seems to have been integrated into his sound, and by extension, into the very elastic grooves he creates with Harland. Reuben Rogers’s other musical affiliations have included work with Nicholas Payton, Diane Reeves, Jackie McLean, Roy Hargrove and Mulgrew Miller.

For tickets, visit sfjazz.org . For more information, visit www.charleslloyd.com

• Mar 27 The Lensic in Santa Fe, NM
• Mar 28 SF Jazz - Herbst Theater in San Francisco, CA
• Mar 29 The Atheneaum in La Jolla, CA
• Mar 30 Catalina Bar and Grill in Los Angeles, CA
• Mar 31 Triple Door in Seattle, WA