Jazz Saxophone Titan
CHARLES LLOYD QUARTET
w/Gerald Clayton, Reuben Rogers, & Kendrick Scott
AUG 31 • 6:30 & 8:30PM
“a master enchanter …
The saxophonist, flutist and early global-music pioneer Charles Lloyd has been entrancing audiences worldwide for more than 60 years” –The Guardian
Reverence, transcendence, mastery, majesty… these are all traits that emanate from Charles’s music.
I’ve been asked many times who my favorite artist is or what my favorite show is out of the thousands of nights of music we’ve presented at the Dakota over the years. It is, of course, impossible to make that kind of a choice. Herbie Hancock sitting in with John Scofield, Wynton Marsalis and his band playing with Stanley Turrentine’s band until 3am after a Guthrie Theater concert, Prince’s 3-night stand with a different band every night, Bela Fleck and Chick Corea, Lucinda Williams’ recent 5-night residency… like I said, impossible to make that kind of choice.
But among those special nights of music are every single time that Charles Lloyd has played on our stage. Every performance is one to savor. And we feel incredibly fortunate that the Dakota is among a handful of small venues where Charles has continued to perform.
He turned 85 this spring, and he was just named Artist of the Year in Downbeat Magazine’s annual Critics Poll – the oldest to ever receive that honor. He first won the DB Critics Poll Artist of the Year title in 1967, which is a remarkable statement about his legendary creative arc.
He was also given the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award this year. And both Downbeat Critics and JJA named him Tenor Saxophonist of the Year.
He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2015.
We’ve lost giants of the tenor sax over the past few years. Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, and this past spring Wayne Shorter. That reality underscores the importance of rare opportunities to see and hear American masters.
Over the past few years, Charles has recorded and performed with Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, jazz guitar hero Bill Frisell, piano genius Jason Moran, Lucinda Williams and more. This adventurous musical spirit is a continuation of the standards set 50 years ago, when he played with Howlin’ Wolf, Chico Hamilton, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, and sold a million copies of Forest Flower, the historic album by the Charles LloydQuartet that included Jack DeJohnette and Keith Jarrett.
This week, Charles will lead a quartet that includes Gerald Clayton, who Blue Note Records President Don Was calls “one of the most accomplished, distinctive and innovative pianists performing today,” along with Reuben Rogers, one of the most distinctive and in-demand bassists in modern jazz, and drummer Kendrick Scott, who has his own star-studded resume and leads his own Blue Note recording group, Oracle.
Charles was one of the first jazz artists to sell more than a million copies of a record – the groundbreaking Forest Flower in the late 1960s – and that led to him being booked on major rock festivals with groups like Jefferson Airplane. But that commercial success clashed with the creative muse that has led and fed him. And he walked away, eventually settling in the beauty of Big Sur. His return to public performance in the 1990s was heralded by The New York Times as the most significant event of the decade for the tenor saxophone. And since that time, he has produced a constant flow of magnificent music.
The New York Times says that Charles’ music is “liquid, fast-moving and rerouting. … he mixes the soul-opening honk of Albert Ayler, full of enough breath to evoke a door blowing wide open; the winding intensity of John Coltrane; and the troubled placidity of Lester Young. And somehow, he never seems to need any more volume than Young did to get his point across. That point being that it’s all wide open, one thing a part of the next, and it all continues.”
My feeling is that Charles’ music is of the spheres, luminescent, transcendent, and satisfying on a very deep level. Drummer Brian Blade said, “Charles is just such a unique voice, a presence not only in the music world, but in the world itself.” Carlos Santana calls him an “international treasure.”
AUG 31 • 6:30 & 8:30PM
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