“Charles Lloyd is an international treasure,” said Carlos Santana of the 74-year old saxophone player. According to Ben Ratliff, jazz writer at The New York Times, “follow the career of Charles Lloyd, ... and you’ll see a grand history of jazz spanning half a century”. The Palace of Arts is proud to announce that following the November 2011 performance of Sonny Rollins, another saxophone legend, Charles Lloyd will be gracing the stage of the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall. Lloyd, born in Memphis, Tennessee, has been surrounded by Jazz and Blues since early childhood and this diversity of genres has been typical of his work over the years. At the end of the fifties, with Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy by his side, he ventured into the avant-garde, then in 1960 he became the musical director of Chico Hamilton’s band. Even before he achieved his breakthrough with the 1966 live album Forest Flower (recorded at the Monterey Jazz Festival) and started on the road to world fame, he was working with East Coast icons such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Cannonball Adderley. He also founded his own, now legendary quartet, where he was accompanied by pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. Forest Flower – a record on which the influence of traditional Eastern music, which so captivated Lloyd, can be felt besides modal and avant-garde jazz – became one of the bestselling recordings in jazz history, selling millions of copies and also kept in non-stop rotation by radio stations. Thanks to this success he was invited to perform on stage with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream and the Grateful Dead. Similarly to Rollins, Lloyd also took a break from the stage and the studio in order to walk his inner path through meditation, but was enticed back to the world of performing and recording by the late pianist Michel Petrucciani. Since the eighties, he has been releasing records at the prestigious ECM label with an ever-changing lineup, among them greats like John Abercrombie, Brad Mehldau, Zakir Hussain or Jason Moran. This time around the inexhaustible jazz giant will arrive with a brand new formation, Sky Trio, accompanied by Larry Grenadier on the bass (known for previously playing with Mehldau and Pat Metheny) and drummer Gregory Hutchinson (who in the past has accompanied the likes of Betty Carter, Ray Brown, Dianne Reeves, Diana Krall, Wynton Marsalis and Roy Hargrove).

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