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Artist: Charles Lloyd
Album: Figure in Blue
Genre: Post-Bop, Contemporary Jazz
Label: Blue Note
Released: 2025
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
CD 1:
01. Abide with Me (Trad.) - 2:51
02. Hina Hanta, The Way of Peace (Lloyd) - 7:50
03. Figure in Blue, Memories of Duke (Lloyd) - 7:13
04. Desolation Sound (Lloyd) - 5:50
05. Ruminations (Lloyd) - 10:39
06. Chulahoma (Lloyd) - 5:04
07. Song My Lady Sings (Lloyd) - 8:32
CD 2:
01. The Ghost of Lady Day (Lloyd) - 10:27
02. Blues for Langston (Lloyd) - 8:17
03. Heaven (Ellington) - 6:16
04. Black Butterfly (Ellington-Mills-Carruthers) - 9:05
05. Ancient Rain (Lloyd) - 1:51
06. Hymn to the Mother, For Zakir (Lloyd) - 9:27
07. Somewhere (Bernstein-Sondheim) - 4:34
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Personnel:
Charles Lloyd - tenor saxophone, alto flute, tarogato
Jason Moran - piano, shakers
Marvin Sewell - guitar
Veteran composer, flutist, and saxophonist Charles Lloyd returns to the trio format on the double-length Figure in Blue. In 2022 he issued three Trios albums: Chapel, Ocean, and Sacred Thread. His collaborators are pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell. They've worked with the saxophonist previously, but this is their first time recording together.
Lloyd composed eight of the 14 tracks. The set opener is the favorite spiritual "Abide with Me." The interplay between Moran and Sewell in the intro lends it a pastoral shade before the saxophonist commences with the melody, reverent, tender, and moving. It doesn't so much register as a hymn as a sacred memory. The spiritual character in Lloyd's music cannot be overstated. It's been there almost since the beginning of his solo career. The title track, "Figure in Blue: Memories of Duke," is a ballad wherein his horn trades almost beatific musical phrases with each of his bandmates before ushering in a gently swinging midtempo ballad adorned by Moran's intricate accents and Sewell's Brazilian jazz-tinged chords. The trio also cover Ellington's "Heaven" (one of his most soulful ballads) and "Black Butterfly," an exercise in lush harmony that includes one of Lloyd's finest solos on the set. There are a pair of killer blues originals in "Chulahoma," and "Blues for Langston." These evoke Lloyd's youth in Memphis playing with B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf. The former's first half is a brooding, spooky electric slide guitar solo that comes right from the Delta tradition, quoting from several blues and spirituals including "Wade in the Water." When Lloyd joins halfway through, he trades fours with the guitarist on sax and flute as Moran paints the backdrop. On the latter,Sewell abandons the slide for warm distortion, ambient reverb, and a hell of a lot of string bending. The guitarist comes by his blues voice naturally; he's spent decades on Chicago's blues and jazz scenes. "Song My Lady Sings" and "The Ghost of Lady Day" are original ballads offered in tribute to Billie Holiday. The latter, with its winding reverbed guitar and lush, lower-register piano chords, almost sounds like a funeral dirge. Lloyd mournfully employs his Hungarian tárogató on the haunted, solo "Ancient Rain." "Hymn to the Mother, For Zakir" is lovingly and meditatively offered in memoriam for the great tabla master Zakir Hussain, with whom Lloyd played on Sangam with drummer Eric Harland, and on Trios: Sacred Thread with guitarist Julian Lage. The set closes with a deeply emotional read of Leonard Bernstein's and Stephen Sondheim's "Somewhere" from West Side Story. This achingly beautiful song is performed as if it were composed specifically for the trio, then whispers the album to a close. Figure in Blue is a further showcase for Lloyd's late-period musical majesty. The deliberately pursued contemplative aesthetic might be too gentle or slow for some, but this saxophonist and his sidemen deliver a jazz masterclass for trios.
Review by Thom Jurek