Charles Lloyd, a Jazz music artist and composer, has what you might term an ‘eclectic’ resume. He has played with hundreds and hundreds of jazz musicians. He has also played with the likes of the Beach Boys, B.B. King and tabla master Zakir Hussain.
Charles Lloyd, tonight, will be inducted as a National Endowment for Arts Jazz Master. Well, in part, he is being honored for fusing jazz with musical styles from several other times and places.
You would be able to listen to this on his new album named Wild Man Dance that features 2 old instruments from Europe. A leading website reported that Lloyd told that he decided that he wanted to have strings. But he wanted to have the strings of a cimbalom and the lyra.
Cimbalom is a type of dulcimer, but it is huge. Its strings reach over a grand wooden box, and are hit with huge padded hammers. It is played by Miklós Lukács on the album. Lloyd said that he listened to this many years ago when he played at a festival in Hungary. It was being played at his hotel after the concert by a gypsy orchestra, and he loved its sonority very much.
He also introduces that Greek lyra, which is performed by Sokratis Sinopoulos. Lloyd added that it really sounds sort of like a violin but it has the beauty and the wisdom of antiquity. Therefore he was attempting to mix antiquity with modernity, is what is going on here.