The joy of Lloyd’s Trios project is that each of the three bands is an on-the-road working band; they’ve not been pulled together as a studio concept. And what gives the Ocean trio the twist of something different is the interweaving of generations: Wilson is the son of the legendary Gerald Wilson, whom Lloyd was invited to rehearse with in the mid 1950s, a dozen years before Anthony was even born; Clayton is the son of John Jr, a bassist whose many credits include Count Basie, with whom of course, Lloyd was associated with.

So this trio is oceanic deep in the heritage of jazz, of jazz as a living tradition, passed through generation to generation of players, not academia. So it’s no surprise to hear whispers of Bird in ‘Jamarillo Blues’, a timeless joyous blues, drenched in that sonorous Lloyd flute sound while Wilson, with an ear to Barney Kessell, revels in those classic blues licks while making them fresh again. Likewise Monk’s voice runs through ‘Hagar of the Inuits’, through the mischievous title to its impish rhythm changes, like Thelonious coming in through the out door. Its mood can change with each bar: at one stage Clayton chomps down on a single chord as Wilson goes lyrically astral, only for Lloyd to wind his way back in and stutter stride into a charm of a diminuendo.

As Charles Simic once wrote of Monk, there’s something of the Pythagorean in Lloyd, making music ‘one note at a time/Connecting the heavenly spheres.’ One note at a time, building a stairway from the ocean to the heavens. Next stop the Sacred Thread trio then!