Charles Lloyd's 2024 musical offering, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, is a majestic double album of new studio recordings from the legendary saxophonist which will be released on March 15, 2024, Lloyd's 86th birthday. One of the most significant musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries, Lloyd remains at the peak of his powers in the company of a newly assembled quartet of four distinctive voices with the NEA Jazz Master joined by pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade.
In March 2025, the legendary saxophonist Charles Lloyd convened a new trio of musical explorers with Jason Moran on piano and Marvin Sewell on guitar for his 87th birthday concert at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara and immediately brought them into the studio to record his remarkable twelfth Blue Note album, Figure In Blue. The spacious double album travels wide expanses of musical terrain from beautiful ballads to raw Delta blues and includes stunning homages to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Zakir Hussain.
"The 60 fingers and multiple keyboards ofPiano Circushave come a long way since they formed in 1989 …the six players alternate between two grand pianos, four sampling keyboards and a spinet, transform the piano sounds in various ways, play a variety of conventional and unconventional percussion and incorporate a variety of mechanical and natural sounds. Totally compelling"This is a showcase album for the many and varied talents of those who made several recordings for ARGO during the 1990s, which includes David Lang's Face So Pale and Kevin Volans' Kneeling Dance, as well as one of the "classics" of American minimalism—Steve Reich's Four Organs. Three Dances by Robert Moran were written especially for Piano Circus.—The Guardian, October 2001
"Extraordinary to behold ….six pairs of eyes, watching, listening, timing each move to the split second. Breathtaking."—The Times, March 2002
“Hagar’s Song”, the newest release from long-time ECM luminary Charles Lloyd, is an interactive duo recording with Jason Moran, the pianist who has been a key member of Lloyd’s latter-day quartet, contributing to the albums Rabo de Nube (2008), Mirror (2010) and Athens Concert (2012). The album features pieces especially dear to Lloyd, ranging from compositions by Billy Strayhorn (“Pretty Girl” a/k/a “Star-Crossed Lovers”), Duke Ellington (“Mood Indigo”), George Gershwin (“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”) and Earl Hines (“Rosetta”) to a standard strongly associated with Billie Holiday (“You’ve Changed”), Brian Wilson’s most famous Beach Boys ballad (“God Only Knows”) and a Bob Dylan song definitively interpreted by the Band (“I Shall Be Released”).