#CARLA BLEY FREE#

Then he worked in a band I had at Phase 2, a little coffee shop, and we played only Monk tunes, and thatвЂ™s where I learned all the Monk tunes. I liked him much better than I liked ColtraneвЂ™s or anybody elseвЂ™s soprano playing. I had known Steve Lacy very well before this band. I think it was just that one record and that was it. It was not good because people would come up to Kent Carter and say, вЂњCan you slap that thing instead of picking it? Just slap it.вЂќ It was awful, and we didnвЂ™t stay together for very long.

#CARLA BLEY FREE#

We had a gig in Italy on a little stage at a restaurant, and I donвЂ™t see how they served any food while we were playing, because it was really raucous and totally free jazz and hopelessly adolescent, with all this energy and nowhere to put it. It was probably just one day in the studio. We got to do tunes, and it was free playing, no chord changes. I was basically a composer and so was Michael, so it was like two composers trying to play their instruments, and banding up with a couple of musicians who were basically players and didnвЂ™t write that much. We decided to try to improve the situation of jazz musicians, like better gigs. I think I met Michael Mantler in New York around the time of the October Revolution. TheyвЂ™re so precious and so wonderful, just like this universe is, like this planet is and like you are. Haden himself delivers the albumвЂ™s poignant final words: вЂњThe whales represent all living creatures. Time/Life, HadenвЂ™s вЂњfinalвЂќ album (he appears on two tracks), extends the social-justice mission to environmental advocacy, and Bley has committed to continuing his legacy.

Inspired initially by the partisan rancor of the 1968 presidential election, the Liberation Music OrchestraвЂ™s work is still far from finished. Bley calls the album вЂњa soundtrack to one personвЂ™s recovery from addiction.вЂќ

In this candid conversation, she discusses the influence of Count Basie, Stravinsky and the Beatles, and reveals the backstory to Andando el Tiempo, her arresting recent release with her longtime drummer-less trio featuring her husband, the bassist Steve Swallow, and multireedist Andy Sheppard. BleyвЂ™s artistic wanderings span free-jazz collaborations with Steve Lacy, the sprawling operatic masterwork Escalator Over the Hill, the enduring prog-rock classic Nick MasonвЂ™s Fictitious Sports and the uncanny soundtrack to director Claude MillerвЂ™s Mortelle RandonnГ©e. He communicated cues to the band with subtle cymbal shots, so seamlessly it felt as though Charlie Haden, the bandвЂ™s late founder, was in the room.Д«efore the show, the 80-year-old high priestess of chamber jazz sat down with her daughter, Karen Mantler, at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, CUNY, to reflect on her peripatetic career. The orientation of the stage made it so that only Wilson had a clear sightline to the conductorвЂ™s Warholian shock of hair. 4, and Carla Bley sat at the piano at Jazz Standard in New York, gesticulating at drummer Matt Wilson during вЂњSilent Spring,вЂќ one of BleyвЂ™s elegiac compositions on Time/Life: Song for the Whales and Other Beings, the Liberation Music OrchestraвЂ™s fifth album over as many decades. Carla Bley as seen in the packaging for 1971вЂ™s Escalator Over the

Carla bley