The Sninit Report
Charles Lloyd – Forest Flower: Live at Monterey (1966)
Forest Flower is one of those rare jazz albums where you can hear a door opening—in real time—to a much larger room. Recorded live at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966, it captures Charles Lloyd and a young, fearlessly searching quartet at the exact moment jazz started breathing in the same air as the counterculture.
Lloyd’s band is the secret weapon here: Keith Jarrett, still years away from solo-piano sainthood, plays with a volcanic mix of gospel shout, folk melody, and abstract fire; Cecil McBee anchors everything with a bass sound that’s warm, elastic, and deeply human; and Jack DeJohnette, barely into his twenties, already sounds like the future—restless, conversational, and unafraid to let silence do part of the talking.
The album’s two long suites—“Forest Flower: Sunrise” and “Forest Flower: Sunset”—unfold patiently, almost ceremonially. Lloyd’s tenor (and occasional flute) isn’t about harmonic bravura so much as invocation. He leans into simple, chant-like motifs, then lets the band stretch them into something communal and expansive. This is jazz that invites the audience in rather than dazzling them from a distance—and you can hear the Monterey crowd respond in real time.
What made Forest Flower revolutionary wasn’t just the music, but the context. Jazz had been slipping out of the mainstream spotlight, yet here was Lloyd playing to a youthful, open-minded audience more accustomed to rock festivals than jazz clubs. The album became a surprise hit, crossing cultural lines and quietly proving that improvisation, spirituality, and groove could still move large crowds.
Fifty-plus years later, Forest Flower still feels alive. It’s not slick, not overthought, and not locked into any single tradition. Instead, it floats—somewhere between post-bop, modal jazz, folk mysticism, and the first hints of jazz-rock freedom. You don’t just listen to this album; you wander through it.
If jazz ever sounded like a shared dream happening in public, this is it 🌿🎷
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