Released on his 86th birthday, Charles Lloyd’s new album The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is garnering rave reviews.
One of the most significant recordings of his seven-decade career, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is Lloyd’s eleventh Blue Note album and delivers first-time recordings of six new Lloyd compositions including the title track, “The Water Is Rising,” “Late Bloom,” “The Ghost of Lady Day,” “Sky Valley, Spirit of the Forest,” and “When the Sun Comes Up, Darkness Is Gone.”
2024 Wells Fargo Jazz Series performer, Lloyd remains at the peak of his powers in the company of a newly assembled quartet of distinctive voices with the NEA Jazz Master joined by pianist Jason Moran, bassist Larry Grenadier, and drummer Brian Blade. The quartet will perform in the College of Charleston Sottile Theatre on Friday, May 31 at 7:30pm. Get tickets here.
Reviews for The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow:
The Guardian: “Lloyd conveys more with less with each exquisite new album”
There are lovely flute interludes – the quiveringly harmonised Late Bloom – and sublime sax tone-poems: The Lonely One; the impressionistic and then impassioned Billie Holiday tribute The Ghost of Lady Day; and Lloyd’s account of the African American spiritual There is a Balm in Gilead, previously explored by him and the late drums legend Billy Higgins on 2000’s The Water Is Wide. Lloyd well knows he’s in the twilight of a great career – he recently remarked to Jazzwise that he’s “in the last stages of the journey now”. But you’d never know it from the light and joy glowing through this music.
Few artists today are making music with this combination of deep emotion, finesse, and color. Lloyd is a singular voice, a true treasure, standing as a pillar now for nearly six decades.
There are second – and third – acts in American lives and Charles Lloyd is the living proof. His latest album, released on what will be his 86th birthday on Friday 15 March, is a triumphant two CD or LP opus that, while keeping to the veteran saxophonist and composer’s strengths, shows little if any diminution of his expressive abilities.