Charles Lloyd Takes the Comeback Road Less Traveled : Jazz: The reclusive sax great has emerged again from his Big Sur hide-out with a new band, a new album and a rare Los Angeles appearance today.

At the Montreal Jazz Festival last July, sax player Charles Lloyd strolled into the lobby of the festival’s central hotel, beaming despite the jet lag. Lloyd was looking forward to the next night’s concert and a brief European tour that would culminate in a recording session.

A year later, the normally shy Lloyd is out in support of the finished product, “Fish Out of Water,” his best-received album in perhaps 20 years.

Today at noon, Lloyd will play a special concert as a kickoff to the Arco “Concerts in the Sky” series at the Bonaventure hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

According to manager Steve Cloud, this will be Lloyd’s first official L.A. performance in about 15 years. He follows it up with a concert at Santa Barbara’s Lobero Theater on June 29. Joining Lloyd will be his “Swedish Rhythm Kings”--drummer Ralph Penland, bassist Tony Dumas and pianists Tad Weed (in Los Angeles) and Theo Saunders (in Santa Barbara).

The Lloyd story circa 1990 has all the makings of a comeback saga, except that he never went away, exactly.

“We have to live in the now,” an incurably philosophical Lloyd reasoned during a recent interview in Santa Barbara (he has split his time between homes in Montecito and Big Sur for several years). “It’s important for us to live in this moment and live fully to do our best today. We can’t change a note of the past, and to worry about the future is some other stuff.

“Here I am at 51 and I feel as young as the springtime. That we must keep alive in ourselves--that spirit of eternal youth.”

The Memphis-born saxman first spent time in Los Angeles during the late ‘50s while attending USC. He went on to play with Chico Hamilton, then began leading his own groups, including one with pianist Keith Jarrett, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee. The ‘60s Lloyd Quartet found itself crossing over into the lucrative rock market, achieving a level of fame atypical in jazz.

For several years during the ‘70s, however, Lloyd retreated from the music world, delving into Eastern religion and an introspective, reclusive lifestyle, making only a few albums. Then, in the ‘80s, French pianist Michel Pettruciani coaxed Lloyd out from his Big Sur enclave and the two recorded and toured together.

A couple of years ago, Manfred Eicher, owner of the German jazz and new-music label ECM, expressed interest in recording Lloyd, and manager Cloud lobbied for the deal.

“Frankly, I was resistant at first,” Lloyd recalled. “I thought that, because my music is very warm and his concept is Nordic, maybe he wouldn’t be able to capture what is in my music.

“After the first take, this guy was jumping up in the air. When I went in to hear the first playback, I was bowled over. . . . My deeper soul and essence came through. Man, it wasn’t cold. It was warm.”

When Lloyd speaks, he does so with an inimitable style and in tangential circles, much like a jazz soloist in flight. A complex persona emerges: He is at once a mystic, a shrewd businessman and a music historian.

“My song is not about straight-on, staccato bullets,” he explained. “I’m more a painter than a machine gun sergeant. I’m about the adoration of the spirit and the spiritual.

“I’ve got an intuition that people are hungry for the beauty of the music again. Although this rock ‘n’ roll stuff has been promoted heavily, it actually comes from Robert Johnson and the Delta. It all comes from deep sources--Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Ace, Bobby Blue Bland, B.B. King. These (modern groups) put a little silk dress on it and spin it around two or three times and then somebody can merchandise it.”