And then they were 20. Charles Lloyd, the eminent jazz saxophonist who has called Montecito home for 40 plus years, has also long called the Lobero Theatre his go-to hometown concert venue. The artist/venue pact has been a happy marriage which reached its 20-timer celebration last Friday night, March 14, on the eve of the Memphis-born Lloyd's 87th birthday.
In a sense, this historic and suitably intimate room proved to be an ideal landing pad and reentry point for Lloyd in the mid '80s, after the saxophonist’s decade-long hiatus from the public spotlight in the 1970s. Promoter, former manager, and friend Stephen Cloud was — and remains — the matchmaker of the Lloyd/Lobero relationship, so it made perfect sense that Cloud laid out a thumbnail history of Lloyd's role in jazz to introduce Friday's concert.
A little historical background is in order for appreciating the latest hometown concert, which included increasingly elaborate visual projections by Lloyd's artist wife and manager Dorothy Darr. Contextually, the long list of Lloyd concerts here spans the range of his various projects, in sync with albums on the ECM and Blue Note labels. Although most of the concerts have featured his long-standing acoustic quartet format, Lloyd has also dipped into a more party-ish mode with the band the Marvels (with Lucinda Williams as guest) and various special trios, including the “Sangam” trio, with the late Zakir Hussain, tabla, and Eric Harland on drums. (A concert recorded live for an ECM album ).