11/30/2023 0 Comments Carla bley 2018![]() ![]() But it also felt like it was high time to rent a car, visit a hero, and try to get a few stories on the official record.īley and her partner, the celebrated bassist Steve Swallow (and another living link to the revolutionary years of jazz) live in an upstate compound tucked away near Willow, New York. At eighty-two, Bley is still composing and practicing the piano every day. In the last half decade, many of Bley’s remaining peers from the early years have died: Paul Bley, Charlie Haden, Roswell Rudd, Ornette Coleman, Paul Motian. She’s everything I want from instrumental music.” ‘Utviklingssang’ is perfect, all gorgeous melody and abstraction, no words required. ![]() ‘Social Studies’ (also from 1981) thus became the first jazz album I ever bought, opening up a whole world I knew nothing about. It’s a Carla Bley album in all but name: her songs embellished with brilliant and witty arrangements. The novelist and musician Wesley Stace has a similar story: “Aged sixteen, and full only of rock and pop music, I came upon Carla Bley by chance through a Pink Floyd solo project, Nick Mason’s ‘Fictitious Sports,’ which I only bought because the vocals were by my favorite singer, Robert Wyatt, once of Soft Machine. From the first notes onward, I was never quite the same again. The deadly serious yet hilarious “Spangled Banner Minor and Other Patriotic Songs,” from that 1977 recording, celebrates and defaces several nationalistic themes, beginning with the American national anthem recast as Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata. ![]() In the meantime, if you want to know what the heart sounds like when reborn, just press PLAY and close your eyes.My small home-town library also had a copy of “The Carla Bley Band: European Tour 1977,” a superb disk of rowdy horn soloists carousing through instantly memorable Bley compositions and arrangements. Maybe it’s just me reading too deeply into things, but I find it significant that the band employed to bring all of this to life should consist of 11 members, for the number itself-“1” on “1”-is the perfect illustration of emotional synthesis. This is humanity at its most beautiful, the resonance that binds and makes us whole. Swallow links a chain of poetic verses from start to finish, drawing an artful segue into “Crazy With You.” Bley’s hot-n’-heavy organ taps a controlled fire into fadeout.īley ends with one of her finest suites, the three-part “Wildlife.” It begins with “Horn,” moves into the smoother contours “Paws Without Claws,” and ends on the delicate high note of “Sex With Birds.” An overwhelming sense of transition, of progression from solitude to companionship, prevails. ![]() The guitar of Hiram Bullock echoes in “Rut,” as if manifesting the anticipation of a physical contact that hovers just beyond the reach of consummation. Brecker’s trumpet is an ecstatic voice in this fleshy symphony, while Bley’s piano buries the heartache of a past that already feels distant. The title track is a plush vehicle for Swallow’s bassing, which, luxuriating in the sound of horns (as if from the traffic they’ve stopped), stretches its body to fullest length. Adding an air of mystery to this candlelit reverie is the unmistakable English horn of Paul McCandless, one of a few adroit inclusions in the band’s roster, along with trumpeter Randy Brecker, percussionist Manolo Badrena, and pianist Larry Willis. The arrangement of opener “Pretend You’re In Love” tells us we’re in for an experience so 80s-luscious, so adoringly crafted, we almost expect to hear an R&B singer sauntering into frame. Their newfound romance, translated here in the studio, might even come across as voyeuristic were it not for the tasteful and sincere way in which it is presented, as warm to the touch as ever. Indeed, around the time this album was being recorded, she and bassist Steve Swallow had elevated their relationship from that of musical to life partners. If Carla Bley’s biography were a movie, then Night-Glo would be the love scene. Recorded and mixed June through August 1985 by Tom Mark at Grog Kill Studio, Willow, New York Paul McCandless oboe, English horn, soprano, tenor, and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet ![]()
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