Paul Bley

Paul Bley, at the keyboard, advanced the approaches tied to Oscar Peterson, Wynton Kelly, and Bill Evans through intensified creative exploration, emerging as an essential presence in contemporary music through his fusion of core bop and early modern jazz ingredients with prolonged free improvisation and organizational procedures characteristic of 20th-century chamber music. This orientation aligns him with an eclectic group that includes Red Garland, Mal Waldron, Jaki Byard, Andrew Hill, Sun Ra, and Marilyn Crispell. Even a quick survey of the pianist’s biography and output registers as richly dense, since he ranks among jazz pianists with the most extensive recording histories and his trajectory remains tightly bound to the unfolding of modern jazz across the second half of the 20th century. Three sessions with Jimmy Giuffre’s trio, above all the 1961 release Free Fall, stand as defining investigations of forward-looking modalism. The 1965 album Barrage and the 1968 set Mr. Joy introduced the pianist to numerous American jazz listeners. Early in the 1970s Bley issued the solo-piano recording Open, To Love, still regarded as his most forward-looking and songful unaccompanied statement and one that outlined the interplay of pointillism and open space that would define his later work. He also renewed his association with Giuffre through the close of that decade and into the early 1980s. The 1990s found Bley highly active both as a leader and in partnership with others, participating in notable sessions that include Annette with Franz Koglmann and Gary Peacock, Memoirs with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian, the ECM trio projects Time Will Tell and Sankt Gerold Variations alongside Barre Phillips and Evan Parker, and Not Two, Not One with Peacock and Motian. Bley entered the 21st century with undiminished momentum, collaborating with Kenny Millions, Mario Pavone, and the young Jakob Bro. The last two recordings issued under his leadership were solo efforts: the studio album About Time from 2007 and Play Blue (Oslo Concert), taped in 2008 yet released only in 2014. Hyman Paul Bley came into the world in Montreal, Canada, on November 10, 1932. A violin prodigy at age five, he turned to piano at eight and trained at the McGill Conservatorium, receiving his diploma when he was eleven. Soon afterward Hy “Buzzy” Bley began sitting in with jazz ensembles and assembled his own band. Already a capable pianist, he secured a regular engagement at the Alberta Lounge shortly after Oscar Peterson departed for work with Norman Granz in 1949. The next year Bley pursued further studies at the Juilliard School in New York while performing in clubs alongside trumpeter Roy Eldridge, trombonist Bill Harris, and saxophonists Ben Webster, Sonny Rollins, and Charlie Parker. During his Juilliard enrollment he worked in a group featuring trumpeter Donald Byrd, saxophonist Jackie McLean, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Art Taylor, and he also spent time at Lennie Tristano’s studio absorbing ideas. Throughout the 1980s Bley recorded for several respected labels including Soul Note, SteepleChase (notably the duo album Diane with Chet Baker), ECM, and Owl. The 1990s constituted Bley’s most productive stretch as a recording artist; he toured extensively, documented many sessions, and contributed to landmark dates such as Annette with Franz Koglmann and Gary Peacock as well as Time Will Tell with Barre Phillips and Evan Parker. That trio continued to perform widely and issued Sankt Gerold Variations on ECM in 2000. Although he released fewer albums under his own name in later years, Bley remained an active collaborator and sideman, appearing with Mario Pavone, Andreas Willers, Benjamin Koppel, and Jakob Bro among others, while numerous earlier recordings resurfaced in reissues. Bley’s earliest preserved performances exist as Canadian television soundtracks, the first from 1950 with tenor saxophonist Brew Moore and the second from February 1953 with Charlie Parker, who appeared as a special guest of the Montreal Jazz Workshop, an artist-run collective the pianist helped found. His initial studio date occurred in November 1953 with bassist Charles Mingus and drummer Art Blakey. The young pianist’s repeated encounters with pivotal musicians proved extraordinary; he also performed with trumpeter Chet Baker and saxophonist Lester Young. In 1954 he led three separate recording sessions featuring bassists Peter Ind and Percy Heath and drummer Alan Levitt. At this stage Paul Bley operated as a resourceful and technically assured bop pianist whose first period of decisive innovation lay just ahead. The situation grew more intricate when Bley relocated to California in 1957 and maintained a steady engagement at the Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles, where he was documented in 1958 with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Billy Higgins. He also worked with Canadian trumpeter Herb Spanier and recorded an album with vibraphonist Dave Pike that carried liner notes and a composition by Karen Borg, a gifted musician who married the pianist in 1957 and took the name Carla Bley. In 1959 the Bleys settled in New York City, where they continued to associate with musicians active at the forefront of modern jazz, among them multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk, saxophonist and composer Oliver Nelson, composer and bandleader George Russell, composer, bassist, and bandleader Charles Mingus, trumpeter and bandleader Don Ellis, bassists Gary Peacock and Steve Swallow, drummer Pete La Roca, and multi-reedman Jimmy Giuffre. In 1961 Paul Bley made his first trip to Europe. In 1963 Bley toured Japan with Sonny Rollins and took part in the tenor saxophonist’s historic encounter with Coleman Hawkins. The following year Paul and Carla Bley accepted trumpeter Bill Dixon’s invitation to join the Jazz Composer’s Guild, which placed them in direct contact with Austrian-American composer and trumpeter Michael Mantler, trombonists Bennie Green and Roswell Rudd, saxophonists Archie Shepp and John Tchicai, and pianist Cecil Taylor. Bley, who also performed with saxophonist Albert Ayler, recorded a session with tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, bassist Gary Peacock, and drummer Paul Motian before beginning to record for the independent ESP-Disk label. Barrage presented a quintet that included bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Milford Graves, and two musicians closely associated with Sun Ra—trumpeter Dewey Johnson and altoist Marshall Allen—with all pieces composed by Carla Bley. Recorded in 1965 and released as Closer, the first of numerous albums featuring drummer Barry Altschul contained works by Carla Bley, Ornette Coleman, and Gary Peacock’s wife, Annette Peacock. Several trio projects arose in Scandinavia during 1965–1966, after which Bley devoted increasing time to performances and recordings in Europe. Shortly after his divorce from Carla Bley in 1967, Paul Bley married composer and vocalist Annette Peacock. As with Carla, the influence of this partnership proved deep and enduring; he integrated his continually developing improvisational methods with her distinctive tonal constructions. She occasionally sang with his groups while he began experimenting with electronic instruments such as ARP and Moog synthesizers. An album titled The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show, recorded in December 1970 and January 1971, highlighted the instrument with support from drummers including Bobby Moses and Han Bennink. The Bley/Annette Peacock collaboration ended in 1972. Two years later Bley and his new partner, video artist Carol Goss, established the Improvising Artists record label. They soon helped set standards for the emerging music-video format. During two consecutive sessions in 1974 Bley introduced guitarist Pat Metheny and bassist Jaco Pastorius to wider audiences. Bley and Goss married in 1980 and relocated the Improvising Artists operation from New York City to Cherry Valley in central New York State. The 1980s saw Bley strengthen his ties to the Canadian music community while undertaking recording projects with saxophonist John Surman, guitarists John Abercrombie, John Scofield, and Bill Frisell, bassists Jesper Lundgaard, Red Mitchell, Ron McClure, and Bob Cranshaw, and drummers George Cross McDonald, Aage Tanggaard, Keith Copeland, and Billy Hart. Throughout the 1990s Paul Bley’s creative pursuits grew increasingly varied and international, a tendency exemplified by the hat ART album 12 (+6) In a Row, recorded in Boswil, Switzerland, in May 1990 with flügelhornist Franz Koglmann and clarinetist/saxophonist Hans Koch. Additional collaborations from this era involved vibraphonist Gary Burton, bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and vocalist Tiziana Ghiglioni. In 1993, now a faculty member at the New England Conservatory of Music, Bley released the solo-piano album with overdubbed synthesizers titled Synth Thesis. His continuing appetite for creative exchange with contemporary improvisers led to recordings with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, saxophonists Lee Konitz, Evan Parker, and Ralph Simon, guitarist Sonny Greenwich, bassists Jay Anderson, Dave Young, and Barre Phillips, drummers Stich Wynston, Adam Nussbaum, and Bruce Ditmas, pianists Satoko Fuji, Stéphan Oliva, and Hans Ludemann, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, and poet and vocalist Paul Haines. In 1997 Bley appeared with an ensemble directed by bassist and composer Maarten Altena. During the first decade of the 21st century Bley recorded with saxophonists Keshavan Maslak, François Carrier, and Yuri Honing, guitarist Andreas Willers, bassist Mario Pavone, and vocalist Jeannette Lambert. He also issued several solo albums, among them Nothing to Declare in 2004, About Time in 2008, and Play Blue: Oslo Concert in 2014, the latter documenting his 2008 performance at the Oslo Jazz Festival. In 2008 he was named a member of the Order of Canada in recognition of his contributions to jazz. Bley died of natural causes on January 3, 2016, at his home in Florida at the age of 83. In 2019 ECM released the archival recording When Will the Blues Leave, a trio concert with Peacock and Motian captured in Switzerland in 1999.