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Charles Lloyd releases Trios: Ocean, the second album in his Trio of Trios series, an expansive project that presents the legendary saxophonist and NEA Jazz Master in three different trio settings. Trios: Ocean features Lloyd with pianist Gerald Clayton and guitarist Anthony Wilson. The first album in the series, Trios: Chapel featuring guitarist Bill Frisell and bassist Thomas Morgan, was released June 2022, and the third, Trios: Sacred Thread featuring guitarist Julian Lage and percussionist Zakir Hussain, will follow in November. The Ocean Trio was recorded in the 150-year-old Lobero Theater in Lloyd’s hometown of Santa Barbara, California. It was live streamed without an audience on September 9, 2020, during the first year of the global pandemic. Lloyd was joined by Gerald Clayton on piano and Anthony Wilson on guitar, both sons of famous musician fathers — Gerald is the son of West Coast bass legend John Clayton, while Anthony is the son of celebrated bandleader, trumpeter, and composer Gerald Wilson, in whose big band Lloyd once played when he moved from Memphis to study at the University of Southern California when in his teens. The blues have always been woven into Lloyd’s musical vocabulary, its influence sometimes overt and sometimes covert, both occurring in “Jaramillo Blues.” The piece—which is dedicated to the painter Virginia Jaramillo and her husband, sculptor Daniel Johnson—can be traced back through a timeline that leads back to Lloyd’s teens when he played alongside such blues masters as Howlin’ Wolf, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and B. B. King. This is a blues of an optimistic hue with Clayton’s bright, rootless chords providing an introduction to Lloyd’s flute, who sets mood and tone of the performance.