Carla Bley

Composer and pianist Carla Bley has been very consistent, if not exactly prolific, for most of her 40 years in jazz. When she and bassist/life partner Steve Swallow hired British saxophonist Andy Sheppard – then one of his country's young lions as both a composer and as a reedman – in 1989, they hired him on and he's been with the group ever since. The recorded evidence was heard on Sheppard's first appearance with Bley on the utterly beguiling Fleur Carnivore, and later on the fine trio recording Songs with Legs in 1995. Drummer Billy Drummond joined the unit as a permanent member in the early part of this century, and on 2004's Lost Chords debut, locked in with a unit that seemed to be evenly weighted all around.

Carla Bley - The Carla Bley Big Band Goes to Church (1996) {ECM–Watt WATT/27}
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© 1996 Watt Works / ECM Records | WATT/27 / 78118-23127-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Modern Jazz / Experimental Big Band

Recorded live during an Italian jazz festival, The Carla Bley Big Band Goes to Church is a perfect showcase for the forward-thinking compositions and arrangements of Carla Bley. Starting with "Setting Calvin's Waltz," a gentle, reverent blues that blooms into a nearly 24 minute workout for the whole ensemble, the album displays Bley's spontenaiety, flexibility and lightness, unique to her and few others within the modern large group format. It helps that this material is highly sympathetic to her style – as Bley's band splits apart into sections and solos, then reforms again, echoes can be heard of gospel music, with its powerful choirs counterpointed by the clarity of a single voice. Not quite as experimental as her earlier compositions, this album manages, regardless to be among her best work in the '90s.

This is a selection of original compositions by the very original Carla Bley, played by a small group of Jazz musicians who represent both traditional, R&B and avant garde influences - another way of saying they're gifted and versatile. They're playing sophisticated compositions with that sense of verve, ease and informality that brings an element of joy to great Jazz. I was tempted to take off one star for the piece on which Bley sings because it seems self-indulgent and a bit silly compared to the rest, but good humor prevails throughout, and, let's face it, she's entitled. The rest of the pieces are so good that one less than stellar track shouldn't bring the rating down. It's worth noting that three of these compositions had previously been recorded by Art Farmer and Gary Burton, but Bley gives them adventurously different treatments here.

Carla Bley - The Very Big Carla Bley Band (1991) {ECM Records 847 942-2}
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© 1991 WATT Works / ECM Records | WATT/23 / 847 942-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Experimental Big Band / Progressive Jazz / Piano

Five striking Bley compositions are featured here, including two extended works, 'United States' and 'All Fall Down'. The lasting impression is one of unusual voicings, adventurous soloists, unconventional arranging touches, and dissonant shadings. 'Delightfully quirky, chaotically dynamic, delicately impressionistic, buoyantly upbeat, and brashly bold.' - Downbeat

This collection contains samples from almost all of my life’s musical efforts, starting with recent albums and going back, with a few selections from ECM releases of my work by other artists, to the early sixties.” This is the :rarum disc that reaches the furthest into history as Carla’s “Ictus” is played by Jimmy Giuffre’s 1961 trio: this was music that laid the groundwork for the “chamber jazz” ECM would later explore more extensively. There is music with the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and with the Liberation Music Orchestra, and with Carla’s large and small ensembles as documented on WATT, and no shortage of star soloists…

Carla Bley - Night-Glo (1985) {Watt-ECM WATT16-827 640-2 rel 2000}
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© 1985, 2000 Watt Works / ECM Records | WATT/16 / 827 640-2
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Post Bop

Though Heavy Heart was supposedly the "mellow, sensual" album Carla Bley had in mind, Night-Glo is more like it – a relaxed, easygoing, easy-listening series of compositions that nearly spills over into fuzak. Writing for a basic sextet with an added five-man horn section, most effectively when one color melts gently into another, Bley permits the lazy pina-colada mood to amble undisturbed from track to track.

Carla Bley - Appearing Nightly (2008) {WATT–ECM 1725516 rec 2006}
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© 2008 Watt Works / ECM Records | WATT/33 / 172 5516
Jazz / Modern Big Band / Progressive Jazz / Piano

As is made all but plain by the title, Appearing Nightly is a live outing recorded by Carla Bley's big band over two nights at New Morning in Paris in the summer of 2006. Of course we've heard Bley's large group in live settings many times over the years, but in this case it's been five years since we've heard them at all – at least on a recording. Her last outing with a large ensemble was in 2003 for the pre-election year political album Looking for America.

Carla Bley - Tropic Appetites (1974) {WATT Works–ECM Records WATT/1 557480-2 rel 1998}
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© 1974, 1998 WATT Works / ECM Records | WATT/1 557 480-2
Jazz / Post Bop / Experimental Big Band / Avant-Garde Jazz

Following their superb "chronotransduction," Escalator Over the Hill, composer Carla Bley and poet Paul Haines once again teamed up for Tropic Appetites, a somewhat different, but equally compelling effort. The instrumentation is scaled down to an octet and the lyrics revolve around trips to Southeast Asia, particularly Bali, made by Haines over the preceding years. Bley makes an inspired choice for lead vocalist by enlisting the extraordinary Julie Tippetts who had attained rock stardom in the late '60s (as Julie Driscoll) in Brian Auger's Trinity.

Carla Bley's tentet performs some of her most colorful themes on this often-humorous and generally stimulating set. "Jesus Maria and Other Spanish Strains" and the three-part "Musique Mecanique" are particularly memorable. This is the perfect setting for Bley's music, with such musicians as trumpeter Michael Mantler, Gary Windo on tenor and bass clarinet, trombonist Roswell Rudd and Bob Stewart on tuba making their presence felt.