Athens Concert
Charles Lloyd-Maria Farandouri. ECM. 2-CD set (18 tracks)

If you sit back and close your eyes, you can feel Greece vibrate through your body from the very first strains of “Blow Wind”, a piece of music written by jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd that seamlessly flows around works by Mikis Theodorakis, Eleni Karaindrou, and even an Early Byzantine hymn. Farandouri has long been identified as “the singer of Mikis Theodorakis’s music”, works such as his score for Pablo Neruda’s Canto General, and protest songs so it’s refreshing to see her break free of that mold. Lloyd’s saxophone complements her voice in depth, range, and texture. Lloyd has described the collaboration with Farandouri as a “musical bridge between our two worlds” but they fit so beautifully together as to seem as one. As the title suggests, the CD was recorded at a concert at the Herod Atticus Odeon in Athens in June 2010 and, with the except of “Blow Wind” is an all-Greek repertoire that Lloyd’s band–Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums–softly dances around with occasional help from Socrates Sinopoulos’s lyra and Takis Farazis’s piano. The result is beautiful, moving, and melancholy, and uplifting.