Hank Shteamer for Rolling Stone – For this writer, the quintessential moment of the 2018 Newport Jazz Festival came in transit. A quick stroll on Saturday afternoon took me from the main stage, where Laurie Anderson was wrapping up a set of luminous, exploratory string-trio free improv, to one of the smaller tents, where octogenarian Memphis piano master Harold Mabern, saxophonist Eric Alexander & Co. were busy muscling through a set of exquisite old-school hardbop. The transition was disorienting in the best way possible — an illustration of just how broad this legendary fest’s concept of jazz still is.
Like the great Thelonious Monk, Charles Lloyd loves to dance onstage. His moves aren’t choreographed; they’re simply a bodily response to the music in the moment. (“I come from a tradition of wild yogis,” he said in 2015, explaining the concept behind his 2015 Blue Note LP Wild Man Dance.) And he had plenty to respond to during a Saturday main-stage performance by his New Quartet, the second of three magical sets he played at Newport 2018 in celebration of his 80th birthday earlier this year. In between his solos, as pianist Jason Moran and drummer Eric Harland played, the tall, lithe saxophonist-flutist boogied over to each musician in turn, throwing out his elbows in time with the music and grimacing with relish. What he was responding to, clearly, was the ability of Moran, Harland and bassist Reuben Rogers to flow seamlessly from lyrical swing to turbulent expressionism. (On Sunday’s “and Friends” set, which added guest guitarists Marvin Sewell and Stuart Mathis to the ensemble, Lloyd picked up where he left off, shimmying in encouragement as Sewell peeled off searing, slide-abetted blues runs.) Lloyd has nearly four decades on each of his collaborators, but at Newport, he was still every bit their match, playing passionate, gorgeously sculpted lines in a tone that harks back to two of his primary influences: John Coltrane and Lester Young.