Carla Bley - C or D/S or D?

I love Carla Bley

She just turned 82

I just played a show with the guys from 0ingo B0ingo and Slugg0 told me Carla and Ann3tte Peac0ck hated each other back in the day

Another heart-stopping thread revive.

Fuck you!
S - Tropic Appetites, Dinner Music, Musique Mecanique and Social Studies. That Michael Mantler album with Robert Wyatt and Edward Gorey lyrics is off the hook too.

... in the sense that I thought she was dead, you lunatic.

haha sorry. happy bday CB!

I posted a Morricone song yesterday and ppl got mad cux they thought he was dead. I gotta calm down.

just off to revive the Sonny Rollins thread:p

She did some awesome arrangements on Haden's The Ballad of The Fallen as well.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

Searching that out now

I discovered Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports this year and it's up there with my favorites of hers.

Inspired by Downtown Music Gallery's enewsletter LP sale, I checked several listed albums featuring Bley, sale list and comments here: Rolling Jazz Thread 2018, little bit here too: Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Spotify has a bunch more.

Or some more, at least.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

― Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 May 2018 18:28 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Permalink

Gary Burton Quartet's "Dreams So Real" as well

such dedication to a hairdo.

this is really good by the way. if you want something more current.

https://www.discogs.com/Carla-Bley-Andy-Sheppard-Steve-Swallow-Andando-El-Tiempo/master/1037191

also best birth name: Lovella May Borg

I get pathetically teary when I play Silence (off The Ballad of the Fallen), to me it's a profoundly sad and moving piece of music and it also makes me think of people who are gone for some reason. But anyway, basically Carla Bley is definitely classic and I should catch up on some of her newer stuff.

► Pre-order Carla Bley Trio: ‘Life Goes On’ and listen to the title track here: https://t.co/MRioVypy9p

A striking album of new music from Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. pic.twitter.com/QNLqRjY2Y0

— ECM Records (@ECMRecords) January 10, 2020

https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-carla-bley/

great interview, thanks for posting

this is something, re: don cherry on escalator:

CB: It was a miracle because he didn’t have any music. And even the words, when he says the syllables again and again and again, those were words from Escalator. Again it was one of the main songs, and he didn’t even know that. Everything was mystical like that with Don. He was from a different planet, definitely, god.

really getting into Life Goes On now. i think it's just gorgeous.

that interview with her posted just upthread is so fun! man what an awesome person she seems like.

She’s a treasure.

another new interview with TheQuietus up yesterday https://thequietus.com/articles/29717-carla-bley-interview

still listen to her last album a lot, it was quite a timely move releasing Life Goes On just before all the lockdowns started.

85 today, I think

this is so cool. courtesy the algorithm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vIUP78EsE

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

― Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Thursday, May 24, 2018 1:28 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is such an amazing record! i love her compositions.

another favorite composition, via igor S. one assumes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiydA9t8UZw

OMG WHAT AN INTERVIEW! Thanks and Merry Christmas yall!

Oof bumping this scared me for a moment.

Ditto.

never revive threads about old people

enjoyed this as well

oops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKxACz7B0IM

oops.

📹

kew rhone should be on its way to me courtesy of the Reccommended records sale

did some looking around and noticed that CB called stravisnky her "favorite composer at this point in my life" in a recent interview with the jazz times. also found this:

the essence of The Rite of Spring seems to be prefigured in its opening bassoon melody – indeed, its first eight unaccompanied notes. More than a hundred years after it was written, that indelible, immediately recognizable phrase is all that’s necessary to evoke a broad canvas of colors, movement, emotions. Which is why so many jazz artists have used it, either as the thematic foundation of a new piece, a symbolic reference, or a fragrant wisp of high culture. Paul Desmond’s “Sacre Blues,” Ornette Coleman’s “Sleep Talk,” Carla Bley’s “And Now the Queen,” and Peter Erskine/Marty Krystall/Buell Neidlinger’s “I Go(rs) Blue(s)” quickly come to mind; the list goes on.

so i don't think i'm imagining it.

Jon Anderson sings that melody unaccompanied on Yessongs.

bumping because I just spent way too long trying to make sense of Bley's bizarre prison-themed Web 1.0 (maybe Web 1.5) website at http://www.wattxtrawatt.com/

It's been updated at least since 2016 as there is a bit about putting Donald Trump in jail somewhere in it.

Finally, I discovered that her daughter Karen Mantler rocks the same hairstyle as her she does, perhaps for some kind of Gallagher 2 scenario.

ngl got nervous about this bump given her age. 'escalator over the hill' is an all time great, always loved this write up:

Marcello Carlin, writing for Stylus Magazine, considers the album to be "the greatest record ever made." He said: "No protest, no social commentary. No expression of love, of grief, of hope, of despair. It is literally whatever you want to make of it. It is devoid of every quality which you might assume would qualify it to be the greatest of all records. And yet it is that tabula rasa in its heart, the blank space which may well exist at the very heart of all music, revealing the hard truth that we have to fill in the blanks, we have to interpret what is being played and sung, and our interpretation is the only one which can possibly be valid, as we cannot discern any perspective other than our own.

tropic appetites & dinner music after that...

France Musique is reporting on their X (Twitter) that she has passed away, shared by folks like Robert Beatty and Oren Ambarchi, though I can't get a working link since I'm not signed into X on this computer.

Noooooooo

Pianiste, organiste, leader de premier plan et compositrice aux œuvres protéiformes, autant inspirées par le jazz que la musique classique, religieuse et folklorique, la jazzwoman américaine Carla Bley est décédée ce mardi matin. Elle avait 87 ans.https://t.co/jXM5upZGrI

— France Musique (@francemusique) October 17, 2023

wow. a true giant. RIP.

oh shit, one of the greats :(

rip!!!! :(

realised i'm a dummy and its not actually an ECM release! feels like it should be?

Regarding 3/4, while working on the archive for Glasgow arts space the Third Eye Centre (now the CCA), I came across a copy of the reduced score alongside a letter from Bley on JCOA headed paper. One of those amazing moments in a researcher's career when you stumble across gold. From the letter, it seems that there were plans to perform the piece in Glasgow with Scottish musicians, but it never came to fruition - mostly likely the usual logistics and funding. Bley's humour really comes across in the letter. She had visited the Third Eye in 1975 when touring with Jack Bruce, but didn't play Glasgow as leader until 1992. Photos here:
https://thirdeyejazz.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-third-eye-carla-bley-connection.html

wow

*applause*

Nice one Stew. Now where can I get some of that JCOA stationery...

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HgaUYa9wwcA/YUnuA7UOkYI/AAAAAAAACX8/Y7GDd4-3YcgfCWmQ_gxjjyJxdC6_NMj7ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/carla%2Bbley%2Bpipe.jpg

When the kush hits

RIP to a giant. i discovered carla bley via emily haines of metric; the artwork of her heartbreaking solo piano album 'knives don't have your back' is a homage to 'escalator over the hill', one of the most mystifying records in the world, to which her father paul haines (magic jazz poet who WROTE IN ALL CAPS ALWAYS) wrote the libretto. <3

Marcello Carlin, writing for Stylus Magazine, considers the album to be "the greatest record ever made." He said: "No protest, no social commentary. No expression of love, of grief, of hope, of despair. It is literally whatever you want to make of it. It is devoid of every quality which you might assume would qualify it to be the greatest of all records. And yet it is that tabula rasa in its heart, the blank space which may well exist at the very heart of all music, revealing the hard truth that we have to fill in the blanks, we have to interpret what is being played and sung, and our interpretation is the only one which can possibly be valid, as we cannot discern any perspective other than our own.

Dave Douglas/Riverside also did a Carla Bley tribute album with 3 of her compositions in 2017.