Free-floating with a jazz sage

Charles Lloyd celebrated his approaching 70th birthday by generously sharing the spotlight Sunday at the Catalina Bar & Grill with the talents of his superb young band. Looking very much the sage jazz elder he is, while still playing with the tenacious probing that has always characterized his improvisations, the veteran tenor saxophonist spent a good portion of his program setting the stage for extraordinary, out-of-the-box playing by pianist Jason Moran, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland.

The evening began, however, with Lloyd front and center. Always the first to acknowledge the influence of John Coltrane, he also cites earlier saxophonists -- Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges -- in his list of noble predecessors. And his playing has become, over time, an amalgam of those disparate creative streams, blended with the powerful tributaries of his own musical imagination.

Lloyd’s improvisational vocabulary ranged across lyrical melodic fragments, sudden horn-scouring runs, wispy high harmonics and an occasional double-toned multiphonic. Underscoring every phrase with a richly emotional subtext, he brought as much inner life to his speedway up-tempo numbers as to the slow dance rhythms of his ballads. And in the Duke Ellington gospel classic “Come Sunday,” he invested the song’s deceptively simple melody with the declamatory intensity of a Tennessee preacher.

For much of the second half of his opening set, Lloyd deferred to his associates, usually opening the way with a mood-defining statement of a theme before stepping to the side of the stage to make room for the improvisational pyrotechnics.

The trio’s offerings -- compelling throughout the program -- reached a peak of expressiveness in “Come Sunday.” Moran’s solo began with a cliffhanging display of sounds and silences before building to a thunderous, soul-stirring climax, tapering off to gentle repose. Rogers added resonant low notes, fast-fingered runs and precise articulation. And Harland -- as throughout the set -- was both a masterful accompanist and an astonishing soloist, applying his virtuosic technique to a stunningly diverse array of percussive sounds and textures.

Jazz improvisation as complex and far-reaching as the Lloyd quartet had to offer can be a daunting listening experience. With little in the way of common reference points from the blues or pop standards, the listener is taken on a journey through gravity-less improvisational space. To the credit of Lloyd and his players, that journey was illuminated by one musical enlightenment after another.