Paul Bley

Although one often thinks of Jaco Pastorius' first solo album as being 1976's Jaco on Epic, producer/keyboardist Paul Bley actually gave Pastorius his first chance to lead a recording two years earlier. Coincidentally titled Jaco, this spontaneous set (which has been reissued on CD) is also significant for being among guitarist Pat Metheny's first recordings; completing the quartet are Bley on electric piano and drummer Bruce Ditmas. The music consists of three songs by Bley, five from Carla Bley, and "Blood" by Annette Peacock. Pastorius sounds quite powerful, but Metheny's tone is kind of bizarre, very distorted and not at all distinctive at this point.

Paul Bley - Ballads (1967) {ECM Japanese Reissue UCCE-3003 rel 2007}
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© 1967, 2007 ECM Records / Universal Japan | UCCE-3003 / ECM 1010
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Piano

Ballads, which really seems to make ballads out of ballads, has been considered both worthy of hanging on the museum wall alongside the other masterpieces and being accorded special merit as the jazz record most used for background music. Since no less a genius than the great French composer Erik Satie invented the concept of background music, this might not be such a contradiction or insult. Only the short "Circles" invites a real comparison with the piano music of Satie; elsewhere you're in extremely extended territory, Paul Bley's desire to play the slowest music in history meshing with a new style of rhythm section accompaniment that sounds like everything from tuning the drums to adjusting the drapes.

Paul Bley - Notes On Ornette (1997) {SteepleChase SCCD31437}
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© 1998 SteepleChase | SCCD 31437
Jazz / Modern Creative / Post Bop / Piano

These are the tunes that have become the stuff of legend. And don’t just take it from this reviewer, ask Pat Metheny and countless others who have found something to say in the early compositions of Ornette Coleman. Either because he was on the West Coast working with Coleman and Don Cherry at the time or because he sees their inherent greatness too, pianist Paul Bley has chosen from the Ornette canon pieces dating from the late ‘50s for this exceedingly bright tribute event.

Reissued on CD by the Black Saint/Soul Note labels, this entry from Paul Bley's IAI label features fairly free playing from an unusual trio comprised of Lee Konitz (on alto and soprano), keyboardist Bley and Bill Connors on electric and acoustic guitars. Actually, due to the free nature of the pieces, the music is less exciting than one might hope. Everyone takes chances in their solos but several of the pieces wander on much too long. Overall this session does not reach the heights one might expect from these great players.

Dual Unity is a live album by Annette Peacock and Paul Bley (credited as Annette & Paul Bley) which was released by Freedom Records in 1972.

Having worked early on with everyone from Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus to Chet Baker and Jimmy Giuffre, Canadian pianist Paul Bley created a solid jazz base for his own distinctly sparse and plaintive style. In the '60s he gravitated toward free jazz, but with less of the freneticism of a Cecil Taylor and more as a melancholic minimalist who would leave his mark on such introverted tinklers as Keith Jarrett. Since the dawn of the '70s, Bley has elaborated on his brand of chamber jazz via a slew of independent jazz labels, including Steeplechase, Soul Note, Owl, and hatART. But it's on the German ECM label where he has scored some of his most impressive triumphs; this 1986 session ranks high among his many solo and group outings for the label.

Paul Bley - Play Blue. Oslo Concert (2014) {ECM}
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© 2014 ECM Records | ECM 2373
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Free Improvisation / Piano

A rare solo performance by one of jazz’s great originals, Canadian pianist Paul Bley, recorded live at the Oslo Jazz Festival in 2008 by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher. There is nothing else quite like a Paul Bley concert. As the New York Times noted, “Mr. Bley long ago found a way to express his long, elegant, voluminous thoughts in a manner that implies complete autonomy from its given setting but isn't quite free jazz.

Pianist Paul Bley was touring Scandinavia with a quartet made up of longtime associate Gary Peacock on bass and two brilliant British musicians, drummer Tony Oxley and John Surman on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet, when they made this Oslo recording in 1991. Rather than a conventionally organized quartet session, the CD consists of seven largely improvised solos, three duets, and two tracks–the collectively improvised "Interface" and Surman's "Article Four"–with the full quartet. Even more unusual is the frequent emphasis on bass frequencies and slow, even solemn, tempos. Only extraordinary musicians could keep such a format interesting, and these four do, exploring room resonance with almost ceremonial levels of concentration.

Finding any previously unreleased Paul Bley material is a wonderful gift. I'm just hoping for more. Much of this live for radio recording was recoded in a studio later (or perhaps just prior) to the European tour but it is great to hear the variations. Paul Bley played many of the same pieces over and over but never the same way twice.