Charles Lloyd Sky Quartet at Jazzfest Budapest at Városháza Park

The shaken worldview of the year 2020 touched Charles Lloyd’s heart profoundly. In the days pressed between silence and anxiety, the idea of a new creation began to glimmer within him—a vision of music capable of naming the unnameable, which ultimately took shape as a brand-new studio album voiced by a new quartet. It is the moment of four distinct souls meeting for the first time: liberated sensitivity, a shared breath, a freedom tuned to one another. Joining the legendary saxophonist were Jason Moran’s gently pulsing piano, Larry Grenadier’s darkly glowing bass, and Brian Blade’s drumming woven through with deep wisdom....

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The shaken worldview of the year 2020 touched Charles Lloyd’s heart profoundly. In the days pressed between silence and anxiety, the idea of a new creation began to glimmer within him—a vision of music capable of naming the unnameable, which ultimately took shape as a brand-new studio album voiced by a new quartet. It is the moment of four distinct souls meeting for the first time: liberated sensitivity, a shared breath, a freedom tuned to one another. Joining the legendary saxophonist were Jason Moran’s gently pulsing piano, Larry Grenadier’s darkly glowing bass, and Brian Blade’s drumming woven through with deep wisdom.

In the spring of 2023, on the threshold of Lloyd’s 85th birthday, the work finally came to life amid the quietly shimmering lights of Santa Barbara. The project matured into a two-part album titled The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, released on the artist’s 86th birthday. This monumental creation gathers together the reimagined light of older melodies, the vibrant immediacy of new compositions, and the quiet wisdom distilled from a lifetime of music.

Charles Lloyd is one of the brightest figures in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, a mountain peak circled with reverence by the history of jazz, yet whose music transcends all genre boundaries. Beginning in Memphis and moving through the musical worlds of Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, he became a legend on every stage. Throughout his long career, he has consistently given the world music capable of standing in dialogue with the art of any era—human music, in which the compass of the soul is always truer than any written score.

Today, Lloyd and his quartet continue to offer renewal: a meeting in which music becomes more than sound, becoming instead a space of joyful, mutual recognition. They lead us toward a simple yet radiant truth: that we are all One, and we shine most brightly when we find our way back to one another.

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