Jazz Articles about Carla Bley

like 362

Carla Bley's Lost Chords at Yoshi's

by Roy Strassman
September 28, 2005

Carla Bley Yoshi's Oakland, CA September 14, 2005 Last night I slid into Yoshi's a few minutes late and the band was called “out . With seemingly a stellar cast of musicians I was dismayed when the music began with what sounded like a hoaky, low-key bossa nova. I thought I was listening to yet a new category: Retirement Home jazz. I sat in my chagrin contemplating my next move, yet still ...

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Carla Bley: The Lost Chords

by Brian P. Lonergan
September 26, 2005

Pianist Carla Bley's supple Lost Chords quartet is a bit like a group of longtime dance partners--the individuals move in sure step together, but leave each other ample freedom to move. The musical result is an airy, spacious feel that doesn't sacrifice groove or drive.Far from being strangers, the four notes in this chord are quite familiar with each other. Joining Bley on piano is her longtime partner Steve Swallow (electric bass), Andy Sheppard (soprano and tenor sax), ...

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Escalator Over The Hill

by Trevor MacLaren
June 8, 2005

The late '60s and early '70s played a great role in the development of youth culture and politics, but it was also a heady age for jazz, where the great changes of funk, rock, and counterculture seeped into improvised music and changed it forever. Not only were the established movers and shakers of jazz creating a stir, but also several new voices were greatly affecting what jazz could and would be. One of the most eclectic and brilliant of these ...

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Carla Bley: The Lost Chords

by Jerry D'Souza
September 7, 2004

Carla Bley is interesting and witty in relating the experiences of the band on their first European tour in the liner notes to this new release. The pictures are great too, and if one wants to get deeper into the whole experience, just log on to the Watt web site and have dollops of fun! It is easy to see what led to the name of The Lost Chords.

Bley is an uncompromising composer. She writes with wit ...

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Carla Bley: The Lost Chords

by AAJ Staff
July 18, 2004

Carla Bley would appear to be the resident smart-aleck of the jazz world. In fact, she's a composer, arranger, and bandleader of considerable gifts and stature, and a new release by her is prima facie important. The Lost Chords finds Ms. Bley leading a highly interactive quartet in a live session that offers both depth and fun.

In any Carla Bley release, composition takes center stage. Here she takes a look, actually several looks, at “Three Blind Mice," ...

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Carla Bley: The Lost Chords

by John Kelman
July 11, 2004

While she is perhaps better known for her large group work, including Fleur Carnivore , Goes to Church and last year's marvellous Looking for America , Carla Bley has experimented with smaller ensembles over the years, right down to duos and trios. But never, arguably, as successfully as with The Lost Chords , a pared down quartet outing recorded on tour in Europe in October, 2003. Featuring long-standing musical companions Andy Sheppard on saxophones, Steve Swallow on bass, and Billy ...

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Carla Bley: Rarum XV: Selected Recordings

by Norman Weinstein
April 17, 2004

ECM has recorded the gifted and goofy composer and keyboardist Carla Bley for three decades, and this single disc career retrospective is a brilliantly compiled testimony to the breath and depth of Bley's singular talent. Until Bley, humor in jazz was primitively realized at best (e.g. vaudeville antics of Slim & Slam, Dizzy's hipster's jokes). She actually brought a cosmopolitan wit to jazz, a jazz player who knew Satie not as a tonal impressionist so much as a musical trickster. ...