Lloyd’s Living Room

Two years ago, just before his previous concert at the Lobero Theatre, the great jazz saxophonist-composer Charles Lloyd was mourning the loss of his sax colleague Wayne Shorter, who had passed away the night before. When we spoke last weekend, the Montecito musician – the home he has long shared with his photographer wife Dorothy Darr is high up in the foothills – had just returned from the Bay Area, where Lloyd was part of the memorial concert for Zakir Hussain at the Grace Cathedral, where Lloyd and the tabla player had first performed together.

“Sometimes sadness can be profound,” he said. “You have to experience the depth of all (that happens). That’s why I’m here … I just know that I love being a music maker in this lifetime. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

He’s been doing it a long time. Lloyd’s career dates to the 1950s, when as a teenager in Memphis he played jazz with the likes of George Coleman, and blues in bands fronted by Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King. After years in L.A., Lloyd formed a quartet in New York with pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. Their 1966 live album Forest Flower, recorded at the Monterey Jazz Festival, became one of the first jazz albums to sell a million, resulting in Lloyd being voted “Jazz Artist of the Year” by DownBeat magazine.

Fast-forward nearly half a century to find the sax man again being named the magazine’s Artist of the Year in 2023, while nearly weeks ago, Lloyd was honored with DownBeat Critics Poll quadruple crown: Artist, Album and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year as well as membership in its Hall of Fame. 

None of that will be on his mind when Lloyd’s upcoming concert at the Lobero Theatre rolls around, representing his 20th performance at the venerable space, which has hosted artists and entertainers from a huge variety of genres. 

“The Lobero is a sacred place for me,” Lloyd said. “The Sangha group, with Z and Eric Harlan, was born here and where we made our live recording. When I play there, it’s like my living room. I feel really comfortable here. I don’t feel the polarities of place and time being incorrect. This is sacred Chumash land, and we are here now. We are the children passing through.” 

The March 14 concert will also represent the debut of The Charles Lloyd Delta Trio, featuring his longtime pianist Jason Moran and relative newcomer guitarist Marvin Sewell, who hails from Memphis. 

“Marvin retains that strong Delta stuff in his DNA,” Lloyd said. “He can go to that place with his guitar, and he’s very touching and beautiful. But he has this reverence for serious jazz, and a thing for Mother India, which I had him playing here with Zakir and me from time to time. He’s just a special guy. Jason and I have had a strong bond for a couple of decades. There’s something really magical about the three of us hooking up, which I wanted to share with [my] hometown.”

Lloyd said that while the Delta Trio represents exploring the Now by recalling what’s deep in his own roots, there’s not really a theme to the music. 

“I came out of Memphis and the blues, through something really profound and deep and beautiful that stays with me, but there also was this wonderful pianist named Phineas Newborn, who was like our J. S. Bach. And I met all these great sages of the music in L.A., like Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden and Gerald Wilson, and modernism came and grabbed me really early…I’m trying to make a gestalt while I still have vibrancy, just trying to bring this universal living room. It’s in the fullness of the heart, and all of that experience that we’ve all had, that we come together.”

It’s Lloyd’s fullness of heart and ageless sense of wonder that keeps him walking that fine line at the intersection of vast experience and beginner’s mind, more or less impervious to the perhaps perilous state of the world. Or rather, making his mark with music. 

“It’s a strange world we are living in, but I have to keep singing my song because I still have the naive notion since I was a little kid that I was going to change the world with the beauty of music,” said Lloyd, who will turn 87 the day after the Lobero show. “I thought that by this time in my life, I would’ve made a contribution of healing and making this sound that touches people’s hearts. Then I thought – speaking collectively of the consciousness of our culture – we’d all be able to live here and make it a better place. Haven’t yet succeeded, but I’m not willing to give up. And so I’ll stay with the humility sutra to know that I’m still a beginner. 

“I just hope each time I play that we get blessed and find that ineffable place – where there’s no time or space or a world that can hold things back. In my concert in recent years, I think some unfolding happens where there’s a communion that’s going on, and so I’m encouraged to continue on my journeys. I’m a believer in truth and love, and I want to express that and share that and feel that back from my fellow sisters and brothers on the planet. This other stuff that goes on doesn’t impede my search.”