 Charles Lloyd with Reuben Rogers & Eric Harland - photo by Scott Williams
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).
 Charls Lloyd Quartet
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 finds his own, exciting way to play inside Lloyd’s musical concepts. 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.
 Jason Moran
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.
Harland, now widely acknowledged as one of the most creative drummers of his generation, took up the drums inspired by Elvin Jones on “A Love Supreme”, going on to play with McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders as well as Ravi Coltrane, and a host of other musicians including Joshua Redman, Joe Henderson, Betty Carter. The list goes on. For the last decade he has also been part of pianist Aaron Goldberg’s trio, with Reuben Rogers on bass. Latterly the drummer and bassist have also been playing trio (as well as quartet) concerts with Charles Lloyd. Harland plays, additionally in Lloyd’s other trio with tabla master Zakir Hussain. 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.
Athenaeum Music & Arts Library is located at 1008 Wall Street La Jolla, CA. For more information call (858) 454-5872 or visit http://www.ljathenaeum.org.
Catalina's is located at 6725 West Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles; reservations and information at www.catalinajazzclub.com.
Charles Lloyd Quartet Tour Dates:
- 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
Background information provided by ECM records. |
Los Angeles 
Saturday, 04 July 2009
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