Charles Lloyd: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
(Blue Note. Album review by Phil Johnson*)

There are second – and third – acts in American lives and Charles Lloyd is the living proof. His latest album, released on what will be his 86th birthday on Friday 15 March, is a triumphant two CD or LP opus that, while keeping to the veteran saxophonist and composer’s strengths, shows little if any diminution of his expressive abilities. Against the marvellously free-floating, largely mid-tempo settings provided by his superstar quartet of Jason Moran on piano, Larry Grenadier on double bass and Brian Blade on drums, Lloyd on tenor and alto sax, plus flute, flutters and emotes with great fluency of technique, communicating a very moving sense of deep longing and often incandescent beauty, together with a little melancholic reflection on both the past and the present.

Beauty is very much the thing. Lloyd has always prized above all the actual sound of his horn and its ability to convey, like his abiding lode-star Billie Holiday, intense emotional truths, and there are performances here that absolutely shine, while also revealing a touching vulnerability. In a lovely little sleeve note he says: “Ever the dreamer – as a young man – I naively thought I could wipe out the ugliness in the world with beauty.” He reflects on the struggles of the past and the relative gains made against racism, before concluding: “For a brief time we perceived a change…but it was not lasting and began to crumble. In my wildest dreams I never imagined the world to be in this place. Now.”

The album is, therefore, a response to Black Lives Matter and, as he continues, to “the imposed seclusion of Covid, and the intense rise of violence over the Spring and Summer of 2020”. Covid and the musicians’ busy diaries also delayed its recording until 2023. The tunes are all Lloyd originals plus the traditional ‘Balm in Gilead’ and ‘Lift Every Voice’, with Jason Moran co-arranging with Lloyd the stunning opening track, ‘Defiant, Tender Warrior’, whose superlative balance between Lloyd and the band, and an elasticity of metre that marks the whole album, set a very high bar. That the bar is met, and sometimes even raised, shows what a high standard is kept to throughout. The first side of the vinyl album’s four is almost ridiculously good, yet the second side largely keeps it up, and so on and so on. The perhaps less crucial showcases for Lloyd’s flute playing – and he has always played flute, going back to his famous version of The Beatles’ ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ in the Sixties – also bear witness to his on-trend tendencies (Shabaka and Andre 3000 watch out).

Although the tunes are originals, there are echoes everywhere of standards such as ‘Tea for Two’, or of ‘Strange Fruit’ in his Billie Holiday tribute, ’The Ghost of Lady Day’, as well as echoes of other saxophone signatures: of Lester Young, Ben Webster and Ornette Coleman, and of his childhood Memphis pal, trumpeter Booker Little, in the composition ‘Booker’s Garden’. After a dedication to Nelson Mandela, ‘Cape to Cairo’, side four concludes with a partial reprise of the opening track, in ‘Defiant, Reprise; Homeward Dove’ that is very affecting.

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Unsurprisingly, there’s a valedictory air to proceedings, and yet Lloyd sounds in such very good form, there may well be a lot more to come. His third act – the second was a premature retirement from playing in the 70s, before being coaxed back by Michel Petrucciani – has already been going on since his signing for ECM in 1989. That’s longer than many players’ entire careers. Happy birthday indeed.

(*) Reviewed from vinyl

LINK: Purchase The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow / Release date is Charles Lloyd’s 86th birthday – Friday 15 March