“Charles Lloyd’s music is impulse, song, harmony. Fragile, it is imbued with a volatile grace, a deep interiority, a lunar poetry. Fragile, because in balance. It is obtained by a quest for the obvious and for simplicity.
Keith Jarrett’s employer in the 1960s, Michel Petrucciani’s partner in the 1980s, tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd is recognizable by his very broad vibrato, the majestic singing he does. When I sing a tune, I just want it to be as true as possible, to eventually resonate with you and give you strength, to be both comforting and inspiring,” he explains. I always wanted to be a singer but I didn’t have the voice for it. The saxophone is my voice. His quartet is a model of collective creation; the evidence of emotion, of life, the inevitable cliché of that telepathy between four great improvisers is here more dazzling than ever. Charles Lloyd’s music is impulse, song, harmony. Fragile, it is imbued with a volatile grace, a deep interiority, a lunar poetry. Fragile, because in balance. It is obtained simply by a quest for the obvious and for simplicity.”