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Rating:
Leading a beautiful quartet, with this 2005 album, Charles Lloyd offers us an interesting array of sounds, varied yet essential and without self-indulgence.
To his credit is the choice of an excellent rhythm section that supports him throughout. The pianist Geri Allen, first and foremost: light and incisive, she is the true glue of this album. And two young talents: Eric Harland on drums, worth listening to in the duets that gradually take shape (for example in the beautiful «Ken Katta Ma Om / Bright Sun Upon You» with Lloyd and then Allen; or more specifically with the leader in «Both Veils Must Go») and Robert Hurst on double bass. Of the latter, it is worth noting the evocative bow work for «The Sufi’s Voice», a dialogue with Charles Lloyd scented with the Balkans and the Middle East.
There is in Charles Lloyd's sound, throughout the album and not just in this piece, a streak of austere mysticism: solemn in the Ellingtonian «Come Sunday», meditative in «Angel Oak Revisited», nervous in the title track, and finally dry and without sugary indulgence in the version of a classic of romanticism by author like «Ne Me Quitte Pas» by Jacques Brel. Here, his tenor sax avoids any languor in the melodic part and contains the original's pathos with a biting finale, also well supported by the other partners, so as not to reduce it to a pure exercise in desecration.
My favorite piece is the long «Georgia Bright Suite», structured in two movements, the second of which («Sweet Georgia Bright») is very fluid, particularly swinging and enriched by a series of splendid solos from all the musicians.
The graphics are sober, refined, and exhaustive in the technical part as per ECM tradition, with an evocative cover image and rich interior filled with beautiful black and white photos. With forty years of career behind him, Charles Lloyd can boast a very long discography in which this JUMPING THE CREEK positions itself high in my preferences.
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