“Hagar’s Song”, the newest release from long-time ECM luminary Charles Lloyd, is an interactive duo recording with Jason Moran, the pianist who has been a key member of Lloyd’s latter-day quartet, contributing to the albums “Rabo de Nube” (2008), “Mirror” (2010) and “Athens Concert” (2012). The album features pieces especially dear to Lloyd, ranging from compositions by Billy Strayhorn (“Pretty Girl” aka “Star-Crossed Lovers”), Duke Ellington (“Mood Indigo”), George Gershwin (“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”) and Earl Hines (“Rosetta”) to a standard strongly associated with Billie Holiday (“You’ve Changed”), Brian Wilson’s most famous Beach Boys ballad (“God Only Knows”) and a Bob Dylan song definitively interpreted by the band (“I Shall Be Released”), played in memory of the late Levon Helm. The centrepiece of the set is the title suite composed by Lloyd and dedicated to his great-great-grandmother, who was taken from her home in south Mississippi at age 10 and sold to a slave-owner in Tennessee. “When I learned the story of her life it moved me very deeply,” says Lloyd. “The suite mirrors the stages of her life; loss of family, loneliness and the unknown, dreams, sorrow, and songs to her newborn children.”

Tracklist:
1. Pretty Girl (Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn)
2. Mood Indigo (Duke Ellington, Irving Mills, Albany Bigard)
3. Bess, You is My Woman Now (George Gershwin)
4. All About Ronnie (Joe Greene)
5. Pictogram (Charles Lloyd)
6. You've Changed (Carl Fischer)

Charles Lloyd - Hagar Suite
7. I Journey Up River
8. II Dreams of White Bluff
9. III Alone
10. IV Bolivar Blues
11. V Hagar's Lullaby

12. Rosetta (Earl Hines)
13. I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan)
14. God Only Knows (Brian Wilson)