Goodbye To Carla Bley, The Great Composer Of Contemporary Jazz

Carla Bley, pianist and composer. Klaus Muempher

This newspaper’s review of Carla Bley’s last album released during her lifetime, Life Goes On, said it had “an atmosphere of end-of-cycle, perhaps even farewell.” Recorded in 2019 after Bley was diagnosed with a brain tumor the year before, and released shortly before the pandemic, the pianist and composer completed a trilogy and, probably more than consciously, a discography that is a true reflection of the world is the work of a brilliant woman, one of the most important composers in the history of jazz, without distinction between genres. Because long before she became a pianist, arranger, ideologist, pioneer of recording independence and bandleader, among the main activities she cultivated was an extraordinary composer who can without hesitation stand alongside her male colleagues on the Olympus of the genre.

His apparent fragility, encouraged by his characteristic thinness in recent years, did not reflect the magnificent state of musical form that he maintained until the end of the last decade, after a career spanning more than 60 years in which he had a whole had built a musical ecosystem around her and breaks barriers of all kinds as a woman, as a creator and as a jazz player. On October 17, Bley died of complications from brain cancer at his home in Willow, New York, at the age of 87.

Born in Oakland, California, in 1936, she began singing and studying piano with her father Emil Borg – of Swedish origin, piano teacher and church choir director – and when she was still a teenager she went to New York. because, as he said, that’s where the music was back then. So, as a cigarette saleswoman at the legendary Birdland club, she had the opportunity to listen to all the musicians passing there – like the one she always said was her favorite, Count Basie – and immerse herself in everything that was happening in the scene. . At Birdland she also met pianist Paul Bley, who encouraged her to compose and play with him. At this time, she changed her birth name, Lovella May Borg, first to Karen Borg and shortly thereafter to Carla Borg, before marrying Bley and adopting her surname, becoming Carla Bley.

In the early sixties his compositions were recorded by some of the most important names in modern jazz, including George Russel, Jimmy Giuffre, Don Ellis and Paul Bley himself, and immediately earned the respect and admiration of many of today’s most important jazz musicians. In the mid-1960s, Paul and Carla divorced, although she kept the pianist’s surname even after she married Austrian trumpeter Michael Mantler shortly afterwards.

His connection with Mantler went far beyond their relationship and their daughter (also an artist Karen Mantler): together they created a lot of music, they founded the group Jazz Realities with Steve Lacy and shortly afterwards the legendary Jazz Composers Orchestra ( (from which some Free jazz masterpieces of the sixties and seventies) and the musicians’ association of the same name. Mantler and Bley followed in the footsteps of famous predecessors such as Charles Mingus and Max Roach and also founded their own record label to publish the music of the orchestra and its collaborators (JCOA ), and even founded New Music Distribution Service (NDMS) in the early 1970s, a non-profit distribution organization designed to promote the distribution of various independent labels primarily dedicated to experimental music and contemporary jazz. Although these projects were short-lived, Mantler and Bley also founded WATT in 1974, which was a record label, publishing house and recording studio at the same time, and under this brand they released all of their albums for the next 35 years.

In the second half of the sixties, Bley grew enormously and rose to the top thanks to three colossal albums. On the one hand, “A Genuine Tong Funeral”, which, although released in 1968 under the direction of Gary Burton, is very much a Bley album: all the compositions are his, as are the arrangements and musical direction, and on this in In this work we see the first signs of musical discoveries that the composer would continue to explore in the years to come. On the other hand, the Liberation Music Orchestra, the debut of the orchestra of the same name in 1970, which was led by double bassist Charlie Haden, but was actually a project of both: on the iconic cover, Bley and Haden hold the banner with the orchestra’s name, and a label beneath the photo reads “Arrangements by Carla Bley” (this image would be recreated in the orchestra’s album Haden and Bley released in 2005, “Not In Our Name,” in opposition to the Iraq War). And finally the monumental Escalator Over The Hill: a kind of jazz opera – although Bley presents the work as a more than hour and a half “chrono-transduction”, with a libretto adapted and set to music by Bley by the poet Paul Haines and with more than 50 musicians between 1968 and 1971 recorded, including names like Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Enrico Rava, John McLaughlin, Roswell Rudd and Paul Motian as well as bassist and singer Jack Bruce and a very young Linda Ronstadt. This original, ambitious and expansive work was Bley’s recording debut as a singer and cemented her stardom by showing the world once and for all an ambitious and authentic songwriter capable of expressing her personal vision even on projects as demanding and complex as this one to develop. . It is no coincidence that he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition in 1972.

From then on, Bley’s career progressed project by project as she arranged and virtually always served as leader of her own bands and projects, remaining true to her own music and oblivious to prevailing trends. As with every individualist, his path came at the expense of everything other than his musical desires, which, decade after decade, manifested themselves in albums such as “Dinner Music”, “Social Studies”, “Live!”, “Fleur Carnivore” and “The Very Big Carla Bley Band” crystallized. many others, always with permanent cooperation partners and different formats. Bley and his compositions have always been the real guide of his career.

In the mid-1980s, she began a relationship with the great bassist Steve Swallow, forming a close emotional and musical bond that lasted until his death. In reality, Bley and Swallow had known each other since the late ’50s and the bassist had been a member of most of Bley’s bands since the late ’70s. With the 1990s comes a kind of maturity for the composer: her prestige is unbreakable and although the paths of jazz continue their path, Bley does not stop developing her own music with a firmer and more conscious spirit. He has already come a long way and every step he takes is solid, which makes his discography flow seamlessly: no matter the project, from the intimacy of his duets with Swallow (Go Together) to chamber jazz (Fancy Chamber Music) or the Size of his great bands (Looking For America), every album he releases is of a very high standard. This was the case well into the 21st century, when he and his big band recorded a final masterpiece (Appearing Nightly), an album of enormous beauty with Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu (The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu), a deliciously original one Album full of Christmas songs (Carla’s Christmas Songs) and the great trilogy we mentioned at the beginning, with her trio with Swallow and the British saxophonist Andy Sheppard.

Carla Bley’s music has always reflected her elusive personality. She can be incredibly serious and at the same time always shows a tremendous sense of humor, combining erudition with the mundane and fun with the formal in the same piece. As a lover of certain traditional forms, metal sections and unusual instrumental conjugations, the sound of his formations is very distinctive regardless of their format. Even his style as a pianist, limited but very skillful and eloquent, has a particular sound, both because of his pulse and his always interesting chord selection and harmonic construction.

In addition to his entire body of work, Bley’s personality grew as he expanded his creative repertoire over the years, becoming without a doubt one of the most important references in contemporary jazz composition. Countless musicians have recorded his pieces, including numerous albums dedicated exclusively to his compositions, and his legacy is one of the richest in his genre. Original, extensive and, as posterity will surely prove, eternal.

Goodbye to Carla Bley, the great composer of contemporary jazz

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