Charles Lloyd - Jumping The Creek (2005)

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Charles Lloyd - Jumping The Creek (2005)

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While saxophonist Charles Lloyd made some memorable ensemble discs with the late, great drummer Billy Higgins—'99's Voice in the Night, '00's The Water is Wide and '01's Hyperion with Higgins—there was always something a little safe about these recordings. When working with Higgins, with the exception of their last release together, '04's duet Which Way is East, Lloyd seemed to ground himself in more mainstream territory than he did on his more broadly-reaching '90s albums with pianist Bobo Stenson and bassist Anders Jormin. With Jumping the Creek Lloyd returns to more experimental territory, delivering possibly the freest record of his career.

That's not to say that Lloyd's penchant for writing or finding lyrical material has gone by the wayside. But when Lloyd and his current quartet—featuring pianist Geri Allen, bassist Robert Hurst, and drummer Eric Harland—tackle even the most bittersweet romantic material, like the opening Jacques Brel piece "Ne Me Quitte Pas, it's clear that they are approaching it from a more liberated place. And while the quartet comes more directly from the American jazz tradition, there are also distinct notions of the more European impressionism of Lloyd's '90s groups. The result is something of a consolidation and, as Stanley Crouch describes in the liner notes, summation of Lloyd's forty-year musical and spiritual quest.

While Lloyd exploits the inestimable talent and power of the quartet, he also breaks it down into a mix of duo and trio pieces. "Ken Katta Ma Om starts as a loosely-formed duet between Lloyd and Harland—an intuitive drummer who, since emerging on the scene in the mid-'90s, has been garnering a growing reputation with artists including McCoy Tyner and Terence Blanchard—but resolves into a three-way conversation when Allen joins in. Allen, whose recent release The Life of a Song shows just how much she has grown as a player in the past few years, demonstrates the ability to wear many hats—from richly melodic and on form to abstract and unfettered. The title track is a largely free exchange that finds the group exploring the various permutations and combinations possible, all within a brief six-minute span.

Hurst, a bassist who emerged in the mainstream with Wynton Marsalis in the '80s, has broadened his reach in recent years with artists as diverse as Lou Rawls, Keb' Mo' and Terri Lyne Carrington. On Jumping the Creek he is equally stylistically unencumbered, as comfortable on the Eastern-tinged "The Sufi's Tears as he is the more swinging, yet still open-ended "Sweet Georgia Bright, which makes up the second half of the "Georgia Bright Suite.

Lloyd's voice has never been better. While sometimes dismissed as a Coltrane knockoff, such direct comparisons miss the point. Truthfully, Lloyd is the sum total of a wider range of musical references that go much farther back. Still, his supple approach and robust tone are instantly recognizable, taking his influences to a more modern musical space; and Jumping the Creek represents a clear highlight in a career filled with memorable milestones.

Review by John Kelman, AllAboutJazz.com

Since making a middle-of-life comeback in the 1990s, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Charles Lloyd has continually issued fascinating recordings. While some of them contain missteps, it's not for lack of ambition. For one of jazz's elder statesmen, Lloyd pushes his envelope of ideas about improvisation, rhythm and harmony, often to the breaking point. He is a player who sets sometimes impossibly high goals for himself, but in so doing, gives listeners something to really hold on to when encountering one of his albums or seeing him live. Jumping the Creek, which continues his association with ECM Records, is another compelling affair. The band – pianist Geri Allen, bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Eric Harland – is simply outstanding. Allen, particularly, hasn't shined on a record like this thus far this decade. Lloyd's compositional ideas here come from rhythmic phrases, small harmonic vamps and emotional thematics. Lloyd engages his quartet in various ways, sometimes in duets, sometimes trios, sometimes as a full band, often during the same composition. The whole quartet does engage fully on the 13-plus-minute opener "Ne Me Quitte Pas," with skeletal phrases becoming larger, striated harmonic statements as Allen uses both modal and post-bop concerns to flesh out the body of the tune. The saxophone/drums duet in "Ken Katta Ma Om," is an utterly lovely change-up that follows. The rest of the band doesn't even enter until halfway through. And Allen does this as a way of introducing a contrapuntal solo that touches upon both Andrew Hill and Lennie Tristano. The title track uses trio and quartet settings to explore the various tensions in melody. Lloyd is a master of moving from gorgeous, gently swinging balladry to blues-drenched free blowing, on a dime. "The Sufi's Tears" features Lloyd on taragato – a soprano saxophone-like instrument used in Middle Eastern and Indian music. Accompanied only by Hurst's bowed bass, the mournful melody slips off into ether as improvisation wanders into the heart of the frame and remains. It's exotic and tight. "Georgia Bright Smile," is another long work in which the band changes configurations repeatedly in the course of its execution, winding around Lloyd's themes and Allen's painterly pianism. Hurst is particularly impressive here as he trades fours with Allen in his solo. Ultimately however, this, like Lloyd's other recordings on ECM is about emotion, feeling, and a sense of peace and serenity. Lloyd uses the rough places in his improvisations, to be sure, but it is only to make the rough places plain, limpid, utterly integrated in a serene whole. On Jumping the Creek he succeeds seamlessly and ups his own artistic ante.

Review by Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com

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Charles Lloyd - Jumping The Creek (2005)

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Charles Lloyd - Jumping The Creek (2005)

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Charles Lloyd - Jumping The Creek (2005)

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