Iconic jazz artist and 2016 NEA Jazz Master Charles Lloyd returns to the Symphony Center Presents (SCP) Jazz series with an all-star new group on Friday, April 21, 2017 at 8:00 p.m. Lloyd’s band The Marvels, which features the talents of Bill Frisell (guitar), Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Eric Harland (drums), released their first album together I Long to See You in January 2016. Also appearing on the bill is cellist Tomeka Reid, who makes her Symphony Center debut this season appearing with her quartet. Reid, a rising star hailed as “a melodic improviser with a natural, flowing sense of song” (The New York Times), was named the Chicago Tribune’s 2015 Chicagoan of the Year in Jazz.

The Marvels is comprised of two of Lloyd’s favorite partners, bassist Rogers and drummer Harland, with two great guitarists, Frisell and Leisz. The program features selections from I Long To See You, which explores the rich canonical texts of the great American songbook including Shenandoah and Bob Dylan’s Masters of War as well as Lloyd classics like La Llorona and Of Course, Of Course. The mood of I Long To See You is celebratory from the start, with Lloyd displaying his knack for threading complex, dynamic musical ideas into the most elemental and open-hearted of riffs and melodies.

Lloyd has enjoyed a long and illustrious career starting in the 1950s and has received numerous accolades and awards for his music including becoming a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2015 and receiving an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music. For over nearly five decades, his compositions have punctuated the post-bop period, embraced the traditional music of a host of world cultures and enlivened the psychedelic 1960s with avant-garde improvisation. Lloyd is credited by many musicians with anticipating the World Music movement by incorporating cadences of many cultures in his compositions as early as the late 1950s. He has performed with such jazz greats as Chico Hamilton, Keith Jarrett, Gabor Szabo, Don Friedman and Brad Mehldau among others. He was invited to guest on recordings with the Doors, the Birds, The Grateful Dead, Ashish and Pranesh Khan. During the 1970s Lloyd played extensively with The Beach Boys both on their studio recordings and as a member of their touring band. The Charles Lloyd Quartet album Forest Flower made history as one of the first jazz recordings to sell a million copies. In 2016, Lloyd was inducted into the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

The program opens with Chicago based cellist, composer and educator Reid with her ensemble featuring guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. Reid has performed with Dee Alexander’s Evolution Ensembler, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble/Strings, Mike Reed’s Loose Assembly and co-leads the string trio Hear in Now. She also performs with Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Jeb Bishop, Myra Melford, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Denis Fournier, Edward Wilkerson and Harrison Bankhead among others. Equally adept in classical and jazz contexts, Reid predominantly finds herself in experimental and improvisatory settings and composes for a wide range of instrumentation, from big band to chamber ensemble.

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