Paul Bley

Paul Bley, Franz Koglmann, Gary Peacock - Annette (1992) {hatOLOGY 564 rel 2001}
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© 1992, 2001 HAT HUT Records | hatOLOGY 564
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Jazz / Piano

This trio date is dedicated to the music of Annette Peacock, former wife of both pianist Paul Bley and bassist Gary Peacock. While Bley is the undisputed leader on this date (as he has recorded many of these pieces before), it is flügelhorn and trumpet player Franz Koglmann who arranged them in such an exquisite manner. The majority of the pieces included here were originally composed as songs. They were vehicles for expressing the interior, haunted world that Ms. Peacock inhabits and featured her lilting, edgy voice, which slips and slithers through her deceptively simple melodies before erupting into a shriek of ecstasy or pain.

This 2008 release presents the two long out of print Savoy sessions made by the Paul Bley Trio with Steve Swallow and Pete LaRoca in 1962-63. This fascinating music greatly contributed to the onset of the Canadian pianist's career.

Paul Bley Trio - Paul Bley (p); Mark Levinson (b); Barry Altschul (dr). Recorded live at "Hildebrandzzal", Haarlem, NL, 4.11.1966.
The most relevant stages in Paul Bley’s musical works were however his trio formations. The bassists Steve Swallow, Eddie Gomez, Kent Carter or Mark Levinson and the drummers Pete LaRoca, Barry Altschul or Paul Motian played with him. This live recording at a concert in Haarlem, Holland is a good example at the "mastery" at a Paul Bley trio.

Paul Bley - Solo In Mondsee (2007) {ECM 1786 rec 2001}
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© 2001, 2007 ECM Records | ECM 1786
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Improvisation / Piano

Fully 35 years after Open, to Love, Paul Bley's seminal solo piano recording for ECM (which stands as a watermark both in his own career and in the history of the label – i.e., unconsciously aiding Manfred Eicher in establishing its "sound"), the pianist returns to the label for another go at it on Solo in Mondsee. Recorded in Mondsee, Austria, in 2001, and not issued until Bley's 75th year, these numbered "Mondsee Variations" were played on a Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano, an instrument that is, like its player, in a class of its own. Bley moves through ten improvisations lasting between two and just under nine minutes each.

Paul Bley, Evan Parker, Barre Phillips - Sankt Gerold Variations (2000) {ECM 1609}
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© 2000 ECM Records | ECM 1609
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Microtonal / Piano

ECM brought this trio of innovative free jazz veterans together for the first time to make the critically-acclaimed "Time Will Tell" album in 1994 - since then, it has become a popular institution on the touring circuit. "Sankt Gerold" is a live album, taped at the Austrian mountain monastery that has been the site of many distinguished ECM recordings, and it roves through many different moods. Parker and Phillips goad Bley toward some of his most abstract and experimental playing, yet they also respond to his more lyrical improvisational impulses. All three musicians are changed by the context. This is free music making at its purest.

Paul Bley - Closer (1965) {ESP Disk 1021 rel 2008}
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© 1965, 2008 ESP-Disk' Ltd. | ECP 1021
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Piano

The second ESP issue from the Paul Bley Trio is a contrast as dramatic as rain against sunshine. The earlier album, Barrage, recorded in October of 1964, was full of harsh, diffident extrapolations of sound and fury, perhaps because of its sidemen; Marshall Allen and Dewey Johnson on saxophone and trumpet, respectively, were on loan from Sun Ra and joined Eddie Gomez and Milford Graves. Indeed, the music there felt like one long struggle to survive. On this date, recorded over a year later and released in 1966, Bley's sidemen are two more like-minded experimentalists, drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Steve Swallow.

Paul Bley - Homage To Carla (1992) {Owl Records 0134272 rel 2001}
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© 1992, 2001 Owl Records / Universal | 013 427 2
Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Piano

Recorded in New York in 1992. You insert the CD and there it is again, the magic of space and time. Seemingly self-forgetting, Bley immerses himself in the compositions of his ex-wife Carla and extracts uncut, raw diamonds. Bley's playing is always very dependent on the instrument he is playing on, as he once said - at least he seems to have done it to this Bösendorfer grand. He plays, seeks, finds, you can literally hear him thinking, he digs himself into the pieces and yet opens the gates wide. A fascinating document of the moment.

Paul Bley - Memoirs (1990) {Soul Note 121240-2}
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© 1990 Soul Note | 121240-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Avant-Garde Jazz / Jazz Piano Trio

Memoirs serves as a tidy summation of Paul Bley's gifts as an individual and musical conversationalist. It helps that he converses with old friends. Paul Motian is, roughly, to the drums what Bley is to the piano, capable of sculpting icy, paradoxical emotions; on moment's notice, they can venture "out" where tonal centers and rhythmic pulses are not invited. And there, always, is the fundamental Charlie Haden, who demonstrates how a few well-placed notes and well-observed silences can lock a group texture into place.

Paul Bley - Indian Summer (1987) {SteepleChase SCCD 31286 rel 1991}
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© 1987, 1991 SteepleChase Productions ApS | SCCD 31286
Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Piano Trio

The mid-'80s trios for Steeplechase mark a consistent high point in Bley's now capacious output. …It's only really on Indian Summer that one feels the chemistry is just right. This is one of the pianist's periodic blues-based programmes. Engineered by Kazunori Sigiyama, who's responsible for DIW's output, it registers brightly, essential for music which is as softly pitched as much of this is. The high points are Bley's own "Blue Waltz" and an ironic "The More I See You," in which he works through variations in much the same way as he had on Caravan Suite for the same label, reconstructing the melodies rather than simply going through the changes. It's a fine record by any standards, but it stands out prominently among the later trios.