Sangam - Page 2

Outpost is pleased to present, in partnership with the Judith McBean Foundation, the Charles Lloyd Trio featuring Zakir Hussain and Eric Harland. Saxophonist & flutist Charles Lloyd has long been a favorite of critics and fans alike for his ever-evolving approach to jazz. It is this approach which led to the million-selling Forest Flower album back in 1966 as well as a recent string of intensely personal records for ECM Records. Born in Memphis in 1958, he began playing at age 9. His teacher was the legendary Memphis pianist Phineas Newborn. His closest childhood friend was the great trumpeter Booker Little. As a teenager Lloyd played jazz with saxophonist George Coleman and was a sideman for blues greats Johnny Ace, Bobby Blue Bland, Howlin' Wolf and B.B. King. Hailed as the "father of the World Music movement" (San Francisco Chronicle), Charles Lloyd worked as a sideman in the bands of Chico Hamilton (where he also served as Musical Director) and Cannonball Adderley before leaping to fame as a leader with the release of his 1966 album Forest Flower, recorded at that year's Monterey Jazz Festival and featuring a young piano sensation named Keith Jarrett. Charles Lloyd describes his music as having always "danced on many shores." Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times, "Mr. Lloyd has come up with a strange and beautiful distillation of the American experience— part abandoned and wild, part immensely controlled and sophisticated."

Zakir Hussain is widely regarded as the greatest tabla virtuoso of his generation and an artist who is always ready to explore uncharted musical territory. He is appreciated, both in the field of percussion and in the music world at large, as an international phenomenon. A child prodigy and the son of the legendary tabla master Ustad Alla Rakha, he was touring worldwide by the age of 12. A classical tabla virtuoso of the highest order, his consistently brilliant and exciting performances have not only established him as a national treasure in his own country, India, but gained him worldwide fame. The favorite accompanist for many of India's greatest classical musicians and dancers, from Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar to Birju Maharaj and Shivkumar Sharma, he has not let his genius rest there. Widely considered a chief architect of the contemporary world music movement, Zakir's contribution to world music features many historic collaborations, including Shakti, which he founded with John McLaughlin and L. Shankar; the Diga Rhythm Band; Planet Drum with Mickey Hart; and recordings and performances with artists as diverse as George Harrison, Joe Henderson, Van Morrison, Airto Moreira, Giovanni Hidalgo, Pharoah Sanders, Billy Cobham, the Kodo drummers, and of course Charles Lloyd. The Charles Lloyd-Zakir Hussain musical partnership is clearly a natural. They first joined forces in November 2001— immediately following the events of 9/11— for a concert at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral. This concert proved to be a much-needed and uplifting highlight of that year's San Francisco Jazz Festival. In April of 2004 Lloyd and Hussain incorporated the young drummer, Eric Harland (a regular member of Charles Lloyd's quartet who has also played with Terrance Blanchard, Joe Henderson, Greg Osby, Ravi Coltrane, Betty Carter, Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, McCoy Tyner and Jacky Terrason) to present San Francisco with another extraordinary evening of music at the Palace of Fine Arts. They entitled this concert Which Way Is East, Homage to Billy Higgins (the late great drummer and close friend and associate of Charles Lloyd since the 1950s). Other concerts have followed and the trio has become an ongoing ensemble/project.