Charles Lloyd & the Marvels - Tone Poem review | John Fordham's jazz album of the month

The Guardian 0

(Blue Note)
The third album in this partnership sees the tenor saxophonist deftly occupied in takes on Ornette Coleman, Leonard Cohen and the Beach Boys

In the 1960s, Charles Lloyd was a reeds-playing jazz-fusion star with a 21-year-old Keith Jarrett for a sideman and a young audience with psychedelic leanings. After a long midlife break from playing, he returned transformed in the 1980s with a poignantly personal sound on saxophone and flute; in the decades since, he has become one of jazz’s most cherished elders. Lloyd is 83 now and, like many original improvisers who have seen a lot of water under the bridge, he conserves his energies more these days. But his art has long inclined more to distillation than expansion – glimpsing the southern blues of his Memphis childhood, John Coltrane’s heart-rending tenor tone or Ornette Coleman’s bluesy skittishness, sometimes even the timbres of eloquent non-jazz singers such as his Greek friend and sometime playing partner Maria Farantouri.