Charles Lloyd’s Twitter byline reads as follows, “Jazz Sax, Composer, Musical Healer”, and the tenor man is nothing short of eccentric as can be attested by the EPK to his April 14th Blue Note Records release aptly named Wild Man Dance. This will be the second Blue Note album for Lloyd over a 30 year span, the last being 1983’s A Night in Copenhagen which featured a 21 year old Michel Petrucciani. The project was commissioned by the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, to commemorate the festival’s 10th anniversary in 2013. Recorded live during its premiere performance, the six-movement “Wild Man Dance Suite” features a brand new orchestration for Lloyd helmed by the young and up-and-coming Gerald Clayton and Joe Sanders respectively on piano and upright as well as the established Gerald Cleaver on drums. This main quartet is complemented by the addition of Greek lyra virtuoso Sokratis Sinopoulos and Hungarian cimbalom maestro Miklós Lukács, who color, texture and rhythmically charge the music. Watch the Wild Man Dance EPK below the jump for what can only be described as a majestic, epic, mystical and deeply compelling record. Lloyd will present the North American premiere of the “Wild Man Dance Suite” on April 18 at the Metropolitan Museum Temple of Dendur in New York City followed by two performances of the work during a four-night stand at SFJAZZ (April 23-26) in San Francisco. Furthermore, we congratulate Mr. Lloyd on his NEA Jazz Master award to be received April 20th at the Jazz at Lincoln Center.
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