Voice in the Night

Charles Lloyd | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 1999)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ecm Records
• ASIN: B00000I73T
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,593 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Voice in the Night

2. God Give Me Strength

3. Dorotea's Studio

4. Requiem

5. Pocket Full of Blues

6. Homage

7. Forest Flower: Sunrise/Sunset

8. A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It's Charles Lloyd again on ECM, a label that understood his grace-under-fire approach and appreciated his distinct voice when others carped that his approach was too meditational. For this recording ECM gives Lloyd an all-star band to work with: drummer Billy Higgins, John Abercrombie, and Dave Holland . The results caught here suggest that Lloyd is at his best with the conceptual enrichment that a great rhythm section provides. There's a return to one-time hot tune "Forest Flower" and other Lloyd period pieces, but also some new compositions and Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach's "God Give Me Strength" and Billy Strayhorn's "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing." Through it all, guitarist Abercrombie is delicately funky, and Holland and Higgins play with a guileless intensity that makes Lloyd seem quite appropriate, and maybe even essential, to our moment. --John F. Szwed

From Jazziz

Comfortable - that's exactly the way the music sounds on charles lloyd's latest outing, though the tenor saxophonist is part of a quartet. Of course, coziness isn't always the best setting for keen jazz improvisation. But when clever participants feel snug enough to let their ideas pour forth, heights can be reached. Lloyd was born nine days before Kuhn in 1938, and both are of a similar mind in terms of form. Voice in the Night, Lloyd's sixth outing for ECM, reveals how facile structures can yield enigmatic playing. Backed by bassist Dave Holland, guitarist John Abercrombie, and drummer Billy Higgins, the horn player has come up with a free-flowing treatise on eloquence. Lloyd's isn't the first name that rolls off the tongue when it comes to discussing imposing tenor players. Like Kuhn, he is a tad overlooked. Hopefully, the fluid moves of these eight new pieces will clear some of the haze surrounding the power of his art. As each year passes, he polishes his approach a bit more. With a fascinating way of instilling the drive of more aggressive music into languid statements, he turns the tensile girders of hard bop into utterly flexible cables. There are moments on Voice in the Night - "Pocket Full of Blues" and Lloyd's hippie anthem "Forest Flower," for example - where the music just steadily unfurls. Much of the credit for this effortless groove goes to drummer Billy Higgins. When Lloyd used the drummer on a Knitting Factory gig at the New York Jazz Festival last summer, critics were referencing it for days afterward. As far as grace goes, Higgins has no current competition on his instrument. Swirling his brushes over the snare, he ferries the rest of the band to myriad destinations. Enjoying the ride, Lloyd's horn offers eddies of golden tone on pieces as different as the Elvis Costello-Burt Bacharach melodrama "God Give Me Strength" and Billy Strayhorn's poetic "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing." This is one of the saxophonist's finest outings.

--- JAZZIZ Magazine Copyright © 2000, Milor Entertainment, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars late night music, October 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Voice in the Night (Audio CD)

 

 

Charles Lloyd- Voice In The Night (ECM 1674)

The most obvious thing that strikes you about this recording is that it sounds so much like an American jazz record, especially on Homage where Lloyd pays tribute to a few ghosts, like Coltrane and Billie Holiday. Compared to Charles Lloyd's previous five outings on ECM, featuring Nordic players extraordinary like Bobo Stenson etc, playing textural minimalist jazz with long wailing sax notes, this is what Lloyd would term an American jazz album, more straight ahead and sounding like all are having a great time. It's hard not to remember or even think of John Coltrane when you hear this, those wide long sweeps of sound, extended phrasings on a single breath, the choice of notes. It's too close to the bone sometimes but truth is even if Coltrane had not been around and influenced as many people as he did, Charles Lloyd would still sound the way he always has on any of the other ECM releases. Abercrombie sounds to my ears like he did in his earlier days ie Timeless. This is the first time in many years that Lloyd has employed a guitarist.Szabo Gabor was his last guitarist and that was too many years ago now to try and remember. Abercrombie of course cites Szabo as one of his earliest influences, someone who allowed him to break free of conventional forms of guitar playing. As well Dave Holland turns up on bass. Billy Higgins on drums. Lloyd has been playing on and off with Billy Higgins since the 1950's and dedicated his last album (Canto) to him after a long illness on Higgin's part. Charles Lloyd has said in previous articles that he is following on in the steps of saints and sages. There is as always this wonderful sense of quiet spirituality. On Voices new and old material is revisited. A haunting sound, memories of another time but still very contemporary. These are late night excursions. Lloyd sounds best when performing ballads but overall this is a great record.

 

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remembering Old Friends, June 12, 2004

By 

G B (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Voice in the Night (Audio CD)

After five tenor-plus-rhythm recordings on ECM, Charles Lloyd decided to shift gears and look back to his musical roots. One of his first major gigs was the musical directorship of Chico Hamilton's innovative post-bop group, playing side by side with Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo. That group (represented on albums like A Different Journey and The Man from Two Worlds) debuted several of the pieces which appear on this album -- "Voice in the Night", various shorter pieces in the "Pocket Full of Blues" medley, and the perennial "Forest Flower".

The personnel is also quite different than the earlier ECM albums, which usually included European rhythm section members and drummer Billy Hart. Lloyd drafts his old LA buddy Billy Higgins on drums, then completes the piano-less rhythm section with guitarist John Abercrombie and bassist Dave Holland. There's little of the chamber-music flavor, world music exoticism or Coltrane-ish moodyness that pervades the earlier albums.

Instead, we get a surprisingly straight-ahead album by ECM standards. You can hear reflections of the Hamilton-Szabo group matured by age and experience. Lloyd's tenor is as robust and powerful as on Canto or All My Relations, with a greater nod to his Memphis roots. His ballad performances are beautiful and often profound (especially the title track and Strayhorn's "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing") but without the occasional meditative stillness that crept in a few years before. On the more up-tempo tracks his cheeky wit frequently pops up; check out how he plays with the rhythm section on the blues medley. And the take on "Forest Flower" is one of the best of his career, light and loosely swinging.

This is one of the best Lloyd albums on ECM, second only to Canto and maybe All My Relations. Like All My Relations, it contains a greater variety of tempos than much of his ECM work, and an excellent collection of compositions to boot. If you want to hear what Lloyd's been up to since emerging from retirement in the 80s, this is one of the places to start.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet Sounds, April 28, 2000

By 

Brian Currin (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Voice in the Night (Audio CD)

This is a sweet sounding CD with some great haunting qualities too. The musicianship and subtle interplay is top-notch from Lloyd, Holland, Abercrombie and Higgins. Highly recommended.