Charles LLoyd Quartet, Fr 10.07.2026, Gent Jazz Gent

Lloyd is 87 years old, has performed as a sideman with masters such as Cannonball Adderley and Chico Hamilton since the late 1950s, and has released more than fifty albums as a bandleader since the mid-1960s, for such leading labels as ECM and Blue Note, in a wide range of line-ups featuring the likes of Keith Jarrett, Brad Mehldau, and Gábor Szabó. Charles Lloyd is pure royalty of the tenor saxophone. With his poetic, spiritual, and deeply improvisational approach—blending jazz with elements of rock, folk, classical chamber music, and world music—he has carved out a singular place in the jazz canon as a living legend.

Remarkably, at 87, he still sounds vibrant, inquiring, and urgent. His current quartet, featuring pianist Jason Moran, bassist Reuben Rogers, and drummer Eric Harland, is not a backing band of sidemen but a fully realized ensemble, in which each musician actively shapes Lloyd’s lyricism, musical narrative, and dynamic tension. Live, their performance unfolds as a four-way dialogue: contemplative yet open, restrained yet charged with energy. Royalty!

For fans of: Pharoah Sanders, Abdullah Ibrahim, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane