CHARLES
LLOYD kept his shades on
while he got intimate with the prosperous
looking audience at the Knitting Factory
in Hollywood. He was about to give them
something tender, he said, but first he
wanted them to know that they reminded
him of something that happened to him
once when he used to hang with Charles
Bukowski, the writer and drinker.
Lloyd talked quietly, the way he was
going to play his tenor saxophone in a
minute or two. This thing happened years
ago at a concert deep in the woods
outside of Santa Cruz, he said. Bukowski
was on stage and an ardent woman kept
tugging at his leg. Bukowski
started kicking at her. "Where
were you when I needed you?" he
demanded.
Those words reminded Lloyd of this
audience, he said, so warmly had they
received him tonight. Then he took out
his tenor saxophone and began to give
them something tender, a passage played
all alone that seemed to come straight
from his battered old heart -- battered
but sound, like a wise old sea
captain.
The
sound he made on the
first lilting, bluesy number was intimate
and unadorned. He fluttered up above the
staff, whispering firmly of the no doubt
profound secrets he has learned, wasting
no breath. Below the staff, he was wide
and woody, just like always.
The song had a little tune that was
hard to resist, and so did the next
number, "Sweet Georgia Bright."
It was much faster, though, and that gave
Lloyd's guitarist, John Abercrombie, a
chance to strut or rather to modestly
disclose his stuff -- harmonic mastery
and a way of playing electric that sounds
acoustic.
"Requiem,"
a piece Lloyd wrote
with Billie Holiday, was solemn and slow
but by no means motionless. It, too, was
loaded with soul and set up the two
ensuing long, slow pieces that gave
Abercrombie a chance to exercise his
hypnotic spell chops and Lloyd a chance
to play flute and another instrument that
looked like a wooden soprano
saxophone.
On these two numbers, bassist Jeffrey
Littleton and drummer Billy Hart were
spectacularly subtle, finding exotic
colorations and rhythmic textures that
evoked the North African aura of another
writer famous for his dissipation, Paul
Bowles.
When it came time for an ending, Lloyd
would play so softly that you began to
see it as a demonstration of where the
human breath leaves off and the sound of
music begins -- a profound enough moment
in art, right? It was a moment that came
on a night full of such deep things, and
it was a night when they were offered
tenderly and accepted that way with
gratitude.
