Charles Lloyd was on a roll in the 1990s, each new CD offering some small surprises. On his new 2000 release, The Water Is Wide, Lloyd boasts a great lineup. Guitarist John Abercrombie and drummer Billy Higgins are back from Lloyd's Voice in the Night, but they are joined here by Brad Mehldau and the pianist's regular bassist, Larry Grenadier. The choice of material is also something of a surprise--Ellingtonia, such as "Black Butterfly," "Heaven," and "Lotus Blossom," the Scots folk song "The Water is Wide," Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia," and several appealing Lloyd originals. The mood throughout is meditative, gentle, and carefully considered. Lloyd's tenor is sometimes sensuous, sometimes stark, Mehldau and Abercrombie matching him with minimalist but elegant support. Only on "There is a Balm in Gilead" does the tempo increase, and only on Cecil McBee's composition "Song of Her" does an arrangement become obvious. Yet this is music of great charm, made more so by its understatement and the delicacy of Lloyd's phrasing and the distinctiveness of his tone. Records like this used to come from Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, but there aren't many saxophonists today who could pull off something so straightforward and unpretentious. --John F. Szwed
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