Ecm Records
2005
Jumping The Creek
About This Album
Since making a middle-of-life comeback in the 1990s, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Charles Lloyd has continually issued fascinating recordings. While some of them contain missteps, it's not for lack of ambition. For one of jazz's elder statesmen, Lloyd pushes his envelope of ideas about improvisation, rhythm and harmony, often to the breaking point. He is a player who sets sometimes impossibly high goals for himself, but in so doing, gives listeners something to really hold on to when encountering one of his albums or seeing him live. Jumping the Creek, which continues his association with ECM Records, is another compelling affair. The band -- pianist Geri Allen, bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Eric Harland -- is simply outstanding. Allen, particularly, hasn't shined on a record like this thus far this decade. Lloyd's compositional ideas here come from rhythmic phrases, small harmonic vamps and emotional thematics. Lloyd engages his quartet in various ways, sometimes in duets, sometimes trios, sometimes as a full band, often during the same composition. The whole quartet does engage fully on the 13-plus-minute opener "Ne Me Quitte Pas," with skeletal phrases becoming larger, striated harmonic statements as Allen uses both modal and post-bop concerns to flesh out the body of the tune.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,7 and 10)

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