Both Veils Must Go

One of the most moving conversations about music I’ve ever had was with Charles Lloyd. Perhaps the time and place added to the effect (a poetically rainy September 14, 2001, in a cozy Greenwich Village apartment), but really it was Lloyd’s guru-like carriage and soft-spoken insight that I found both inspiring and challenging. His music amplifies that effect exponentially. Clearly, I’m not the first to have had this experience (as Stanley Crouch’s liner notes demonstrate) and Lloyd’s new disc, Jumping the Creek, captures another snapshot of this master improviser at work in the close company of Geri Allen (piano), Robert Hurst (double-bass), and Eric Harland (drums, percussion). Though perhaps one of the more simply constructed tracks on the disc (three minutes of sax with percussion accompaniment), “Both Veils Must Go” is the one I find the most affecting, as if Lloyd has leaned towards me to impart some bit of grandfatherly advice or recalled moment from the distant past.

—MS