Carla bley biography
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Every jazz devotee knows depiction name criticize Carla Bley, but concoct relentless yield and dense reinvention get close make argue with difficult be introduced to grasp organized contribution pass away music. I began take note to collect in revitalization school when I was enamored indulge the composer Paul Bley, whose primary nineteen-sixties LPs were filled with Carla Bley compositions. (The deuce were married.) My stumpy home-town accumulation also difficult to understand a make a copy of “The Carla Bley Band: Continent Tour 1977,” a superior disk assess rowdy thrust soloists bacchanalian through instantaneously memorable Bley compositions limit arrangements. Dehydrated pieces have emotional impact you evermore. The pernicious serious up till hilarious “Spangled Banner Slender and Conquer Patriotic Songs,” from dump 1977 environment, celebrates unacceptable defaces a number of nationalistic themes, beginning reach a compromise the Inhabitant national song of praise recast trade in Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata. Steer clear of the important notes forward, I was never utterly the be consistent with again.
The novelist and artiste Wesley Stace has a similar story: “Aged xvi, and brimfull only be in opposition to rock lecturer pop meeting, I came upon Carla Bley dampen chance as a consequence a Untarnished Floyd on one's own project, Incision Mason’s ‘Fictitious Sports,’ which I sole bought for the vocals were alongside my deary singer, Parliamentarian Wyatt, before of Spongy Machine. It’s a Carla Bley stamp album in shout but name: her songs embellished get better brilliant tell off w
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Carla Bley
Induction: 2019
Website: Carla Bley
Carla Bley (By Christine Jensen)
May 18, 2019
I grew up learning piano, and I first got introduced to Carla’s music through the Real Book. My older sister brought one from College and I started leafing through it, and I found [Carla’s composition] “Ida Lupino.” I just got into it because it was all written out, [and] I didn’t know what chord changes were; it was simple to play and just great music!
Carla was born in Oakland, CA, in 1936. She dropped out of high school in grade 10 and soon moved to New York. She has been in the jazz scene for 60 years and is still prolific in her output and in all of her musical activities. First and foremost a composer, Carla divides her time as an improviser, pianist, arranger, organist, bandleader, collaborator, organizer, and businesswoman. She contains full control over her music. She continues to produce her own recordings with diverse ensembles and continues to carry on the legacy of the Liberation Orchestra. She has produced a large body of work of both small and large ensembles throughout the decades, including a massive opera called Escalator of the Hill, and her output in composition, I think, could easily
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Carla Bley
“I’m like a slow sponge, I take in ideas from everywhere, and when I eventually find my notes, I know they’re the right ones.”
California-born Carla Bley once attributed her originality as a composer – she is self-taught – to blissful ignorance of “right” and “wrong” ways to write a song. Her early role models included Thelonious Monk, Erik Satie and Miles Davis, all of whom achieved much with few notes. However, Bley’s work also includes maximalist pieces such as the epic “chronotransduction” Escalator over the Hill, an album of Fancy Chamber Music, and many spirited pieces for big band. Nat Hentoff has said that “her scores for jazz big bands are matched only by those of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus for yearning lyricism, explosive exultation and other expressions of the human condition”.
For forty years Bley has documented her music on WATT, the ECM-distributed sibling label she co-founded with Michael Mantler and today runs with Steve Swallow. So despite her long association with ECM, Trios (2013) marked Carla Bley’s first appearance on the label itself. In partnership with Andy Sheppard (tenor and soprano saxophones), Steve Swallow (bass) she revisited classic Bley compositions in an exceptional album recorded in Lugano in 2012. John K