Results for "carla bley"

Video

Life Goes On

Featuring the music of Carla Bley
Duration: 6:00
February 7, 2020

A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as a stoical blues, at first melancholic then hopeful. “Beautiful Telephones”, inspired by a US president’s first observation on entering the Oval Office, has plenty of Bley’s dark wit. And “Copycat” explores the notion of call-and-response in fresh ways as the improvisers continue each other’s thoughts. Throughout, Carla’s distinctive piano, with its hints of Monk and Satie, is beautifully framed by Swallow’s eloquent, elegant bass guitar and Sheppard’s yearning saxes. This trio has a unique collective sound, reflecting – as The Telegraph recently noted – “musical mastery of a rare order”.   

Musician

Carla Bley

Born: May 11, 1938

Carla Bley was born in Oakland, California in 1936. Her father Emil Borg, a piano teacher and church organist, began giving her music lessons when she was three years old and she was soon playing at church functions. But her musical education ended at the age of eight. Her formal education stopped entirely when she dropped out of high school after completing the tenth grade.

During her adolescence Carla was drawn to jazz and moved to New York City to be closer to the musicians she admired. She resumed her musical education by working as a cigarette girl at the notorious Birdland jazz club, where she was able to hear the greatest jazz musicians of the day. She met pianist Paul Bley and eventually relocated to Los Angeles, where Paul and his quartet had a steady gig at the Hillcrest Club. She began to write music. When saxophonist Ornette Coleman came on the scene in the mid-fifties, Paul Bley immediately hired him and Carla was exposed nightly to ‘free’ playing, a powerful influence that was to affect her writing for many years.

Article: Album Review

Carla Bley: Life Goes On

by Dan McClenaghan
February 4, 2020

Pianist / composer Carla Bley is an inspiring woman. Pianist Paul Bley was inspired to marry her, and record a full album of her compositions: Barrage (ESP-Disk, 1965), in addition to including four of her originals on Open, To Love (ECM Records, 1973). George Russell included her “Bent Eagle" on his Stratusfunk (Riverside Records, 1960). Jimmy ...

Article: Profile

Issie Barratt: Every Solo Is A New Invitation

by Duncan Heining
January 21, 2020

Issie Barratt is one of the most significant jazz educators in Britain today. From 1999-2004, Barratt was head of Jazz at Trinity College of Music but her role as Artistic Director of the National Youth Jazz Collective has been of even greater importance in developing young jazz talent. Now in its, thirteenth year, NYJC goes from ...

Article: Album Review

Adam Berenson: Every Beginning Is A Sequel

by Karl Ackermann
January 17, 2020

Pianist/keyboardist/composer Adam Berenson--across more than twenty recordings--offers incontrovertible evidence that talent surpasses an affinity for category. He is equally at home with jazz, electronica, blues, or a string quartet. On his previous , fully-acoustic album, Stringent and Sempiternal (Dream Works, 2019) Berenson went in an unusual direction (for him), covering works of Miles Davis, Bud Powell, ...

Article: Radio & Podcasts

Hell's Bells - That Special Time of Year

by Mary Foster Conklin
January 6, 2020

Includes more holiday songs penned by women as the season is in full swing, with Christmas albums from B3 Kings, Martina DaSilva, Dan Chmielinski, Noel & Maria and new releases from Rez Abbasi and Isabelle Olivier, Carmen Souza, Iro Haarla, plus birthday shout outs to Cassandra Wilson (pictured), Sylvia Syms, Dave Brubeck, Cory Weeds, Kerry Marsh, ...

Article: Live Review

Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival 2019

by Ian Patterson
December 28, 2019

Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival Various venues Falcarragh, Ireland December 6-7, 2019 Two days, three venues and six gigs. Small but beautiful. After the success of its inaugural edition in 2018, Falcarragh Winter Jazz Festival returned to the west-Donegal town with almost exactly the same format, and bar one eleventh hour ...

Article: Interview

Fabrizio Bosso Spiritual Trio: Un Lungo Viaggio nella Musica Nera.

by Paolo Marra
December 27, 2019

Lo Spiritual Trio di Fabrizio Bosso è tra i progetti più interessanti del panorama jazz italiano degli ultimi dieci anni. Con estro e originalità, Bosso l'organista Alberto Marsico e il batterista Alessandro Minetto, continuano la loro personale esplorazione di brani del repertorio della musica nera tra gospel, blues e soul. Il risultato è convicente ...

Article: Album Review

Bobby Naughton: Solo Vibraphone Hartford

by Mark Corroto
December 25, 2019

Nearly all adventurous jazz connoisseurs are familiar with Joe McPhee's landmark recording Tenor (Hat Hut Records, 1977), the release that put Werner X. Uehlinger's label on the map. Certainly its rerelease twenty-two years later as Tenor & Fallen Angels (hatOLOGY, 2000} accomplished that task. Recorded in a cabin in Switzerland on a cassette recorder, McPhee's essence ...

Article: Radio & Podcasts

Bending Towards the Light

by Mary Foster Conklin
December 24, 2019

This week's episode includes a smattering of old and new holiday songs penned by women, a boatload of new releases from vocalists Alex Pangman, Jim Caruso, Billy Stritch and Klea Blackhurst, Alla Ray, Alison Wedding, pianists Hyuna Park, Simone Baron and Carmen Sandim, trombonist Aubrey Logan and bassist Kristen Korb, plus birthday shout outs to Ethel ...