This minimalist format displays the lucidity of her thinking, and also allows us to hear her influences more clearly than we ever have been able to in her large-ensemble pieces.Įven the packages emphasize their fraternity. In each of them she works with her most intimate band so far, a drummerless trio with Andy Sheppard on tenor and soprano and Steve Swallow on electric bass. Each consists entirely of distinctive Bley originals, and each has at least one three-part suite of new music to savor. They were all recorded in Lugano, Switzerland. Hearing all of them together, as I did recently, provides a refreshing reminder of her greatness. Her last three CDs, Trios (2012), Andando el tiempo (2017), and Life Goes On (2020) are her only recordings so far for ECM, although her private labels, WATT and XtraWATT, have had a long distribution partnership with the German parent company. In any case, she seems to have no ambition to be recognized as anything other than herself. Perhaps she has been inoculated against attention by experiencing the flow and ebb of acclaim and indifference. If you look at the DownBeat poll runners-up for “Best Jazz Composer,” she is usually there - sometimes way down the list, often below names who are much less significant. She is 84, and will turn 85 on May 11, 2021. She stands apart, almost literally, living in upstate New York with Steve Swallow and emerging every once in a while to do an interview or to make a recording. Berklee and the New England Conservatory offer ambitious concerts at least once a year to spotlight ambitious, usually genre-defying, work by students and alumni.Īnd I haven’t yet mentioned Anthony Braxton, David Murray, Miguel Zenón, Dave Douglas, Vijay Iyer …īley is unlike any of the above. Darrell Katz and his many colleagues soldier on with the Jazz Composers’ Alliance Orchestra (now 35 years old), offering new music in live showcases and CDs. Mark Harvey turns out new (often topical) work every year for the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. Not to mention Uri Caine, whose grand oratorio for jazz quartet, vocal soloist, chorus, and orchestra, “The Passion of Octavius Catto,” was to be premiered with the BSO in March 2020, Before Everything Changed.Įven in our own community, jazz composition thrives. And Wynton Marsalis, who broke the genre line for the Pulitzers in 1997. And there are Don Byron, Wadada Leo Smith, and John Zorn, who were finalists for same. There are Anthony Davis and and Henry Threadgill, winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Music (both unwilling to crowbar themselves into the frame of “jazz”). There is Wayne Shorter, whose body of short-form compositions is a Real Book in itself for aspiring players, and who has ambitiously expanded a personal universe-view into long-form work. She’s won the hat trick of Best Composer, Best Arranger, and Best Big Band seven times in the last 10 DownBeat Critics’ Polls, and in 2013, she tied for that honor with Darcy James Argue, another name to reckon with. Yes, there is Maria Schneider, five-time Grammy winner (and a nominee again this year). She is not the only one, especially in these days of talent aplenty, but she is too often overshadowed, and that is something of a shame. She is one of the greatest living jazz composers. She is not Serious, as in “self-important.” But she is very serious, as in “true to an artistic vision.” In minimalist formats, like the trio with which she has been making most of her recent recordings, she and her mates can be so laconic as to make Thelonious Monk’s groups seem wordy. In big formats, she has been grandiose, usually ironically, although she is capable of suddenly transforming grandiosity to intimacy. She is not afraid of schmaltz, although she often adds lemon juice to it. Her bands have, at times, been like traveling vaudeville troupes. She likes to be funny in a puckish, not-at-all-jazzy way. She is not a flashy pianist - in fact, some of her solos sound prewritten. Some people seem to think that admiring Bley and listening raptly to her recordings are guilty pleasures. Carla Bley - one of the greatest living jazz composers.
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