As we hold our heads and gasp for breath, Charles Lloyd's latest trio clears a space for us.
Zakir Hussain's Indian drums and prayerful singing set a mood of alert meditation and transcendence that has long been a primary feature of Lloyd's work, and Lloyd's gentle improvisations on alto flute, tenor sax and tarogato (wooden soprano-ish reed) easily cycled back to his collaboration with Hussain (perhaps best known from John McLaughlin's Shakhti) on 2004's "Sangam." If 32-year-old guitarist Julian Lage seemed like a wild card, he indeed amplified every possibility Hussain and Lloyd laid on the table, rocking on his heels as he dealt out an astonishing combination of intuition, surprise, percussive adaptability, silken atmospherics and perfect rhythm. He has already joined the company of masters, and it's hard to imagine he can get any better.
Retiring Healdsburg Jazz Fest founder Jessica Felix remembered Lage hanging around from the time he was 10. And Lloyd recalled a lakeside conversation, decades back, with his onetime guitarist John Abercrombie about child-prodigy Lage: "Abercrombie said, 'I'm going to take Julian out in the middle of this lake and drown his ass.' Because John saw what was coming."
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Those who read this before Sun. Oct. 4 (the newly extended deadline), or who had difficulty signing on to the technology-challenged live concert, can still view a replay here.
PHOTOS BY FUZZY BARRANCA.