Charles Lloyd & The Marvels with Lucinda Williams

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Photo by D. Darr

Charles Lloyd & The Marvels with Lucinda Williams

Courtesy of Duke Performances, Lucinda Williams takes the stage with jazz legends Charles Lloyd & the Marvels to perform music from Vanished Gardens, her 2018 collaborative album with the band. Although their sounds—bluesy country ballads and energetic jazz, respectively—have taken them on different paths throughout their storied careers, Williams and Lloyd share influences as well as roots in the deep South (Lloyd, an NEA Jazz Master, was born in Memphis, Tennessee; Williams in Louisiana), which makes the partnership feel both surprising and organic. The album features Williams on five tracks, including three of her reprised songs and a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel.” The meditative, textured ease of The Marvels’ playing, which often evokes ambient bayou sounds, is a compelling compatriot for Williams’s gravelly vocals. Her signature emotional range is highlighted in tracks that poetically trawl the distance between full-bodied feelings: sadness alloyed with dissatisfaction, the blues compromised by happiness. —Sarah Edwards