11/30/2023 0 Comments Carla bley album![]() Throughout her career, Bley has thought of herself as a writer first, describing herself as 99 percent composer and one percent pianist. Later life and career Carla Bley conducts her band at the Pori Jazz Festival in Pori, Finland, 1978.Ī number of musicians began to record Bley's compositions: George Russell recorded "Bent Eagle" for his album Stratusphunk in 1960 Jimmy Giuffre recorded "Ictus" on his album Thesis and Paul Bley's Barrage consisted entirely of her compositions. The couple divorced in 1967, but she kept his surname professionally. She toured with him under the name Karen Borg, before she changed her name in 1957 to Carla Borg and married Paul Bley the same year adopting the Bley name. ![]() After giving up the church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland, where she met jazz pianist Paul Bley. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set), as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, John Scofield and her ex-husband Paul Bley.Įarly life Carla Bley at Keystone Korner, San Francisco 1979īley was born in Oakland, California, United States, to Emil Borg (1899–1990), a piano teacher and church choirmaster, who encouraged her to sing and to learn to play the piano, and Arline Anderson (1907–1944), who died when Bley was eight years old. Bley plays cat and mouse, quotes "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "Yankee Doodle" and holds our attention as few others can.Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg May 11, 1936) is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and bandleader. Swallow, the epitome of fluency, is particularly slippery yet center holding, while Sheppard increasingly voices Bley's concerns with an agile breathiness that warrants its own solo track. Credit that to the trio's uncommon embroidery, since each is a lead voice more than willing to immerse itself into the other's story to compliment the whole. Built in three Charlie Chaplin-esque, Thelonious Monk-like, Erik Satie-inspired suites, "Life Goes On," "Beautiful Telephones," and "Copycat" each capture more light than their immediate predecessor in compositional flavor and optimism. As has been the decades long template, bassist Steve Swallow and saxophonist Andy Sheppard tell their tales while interpreting Bley's, allowing the vaguest remembrance to play as strong a part in the drama as the most defining moments. Recorded in the grand chamber that is Auditorio Stelio Molo in Lugano, but exercised vigorously across stages in Europe and America, Life Goes On has the feel of an oft-told oral history whose wily narrator isn't shy to embellish or lay bare. So let's take a brief moment to be thankful for the odd, out of time quirks that have brought us to this same strange moment while still being able to rejoice in Bley's skillfully subversive storytelling. Which perhaps explains why the title track of Life Goes On rolls in on the 12-bar like a music obsessed, post-bop cigarette girl absorbing Count Basie at Birdland in the 1950s. After decades of illuminating and revealing work, reveling in and breaking free of shadows, it is those same shadows that still inspire and inform Carla Bley.
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