Paul Motian combined an uncommonly refined touch on the drums with an exceptional ear for instrumental color, functioning simultaneously as a sophisticated improviser and as a bandleader drawn to demanding post-bop forms. Extended work alongside singular pianists such as Thelonious Monk, Paul Bley, and Lennie Tristano clearly informed his own conception. During the 1960s and 1970s he held ongoing positions in the trios and quartets of Bill Evans, Bley, Mose Allison, and Keith Jarrett. Absorbing the atmospheric sensibilities of those keyboardists, he launched his own discography with the 1974 ECM album Tribute.
Stephen Paul Motian entered the world in Philadelphia on March 25, 1931, spent his childhood in Providence, Rhode Island, and took up drumming at age twelve, later touring New England with a swing band. After settling in New York in 1955 he performed with Thelonious Monk, Lennie Tristano, Coleman Hawkins, Tony Scott, and George Russell before becoming the regular drummer in Bill Evans’ celebrated trio with bassist Scott LaFaro, documented on the landmark recordings Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby.
Motian left Evans in 1963 to spend roughly a year with Paul Bley and initiated a sustained association with Keith Jarrett in 1966 that continued through the pianist’s American quartet until 1977. He also freelanced with Mose Allison, Charles Lloyd, Carla Bley, and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Ensemble, and declined an invitation to serve as John Coltrane’s second drummer.
His first date as leader, Conception Vessel, appeared on ECM in 1972; Tribute followed in 1974. A stable ensemble formed in 1977 that included tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano yielded several additional ECM sessions before guitarist Bill Frisell joined in 1980. Further recordings for ECM and Soul Note preceded a move to JMT in 1988, where he began a lengthy run of distinguished albums with Monk in Motian. In the 1990s he also directed the Electric Bebop Band, whose personnel included saxophonist Joshua Redman, guitarists Kurt Rosenwinkel and Brad Shepik, and bassist Stomu Takeishi. Signing with Winter & Winter in 1998, he initiated another steady stream of releases beginning with 2000 + One in 1999, Europe in 2001, and Holiday for Strings in 2002.
Returning to ECM in 2005, he issued I Have the Room Above Her that year, Garden of Eden in 2006, and Time and Time Again in 2007. The fifth installment in his standards series, On Broadway, Vol. 5, appeared in 2009, followed in 2010 by the trio album Lost in a Dream on ECM. Several projects surfaced in 2011, among them Consort in Motion, an exploration of Renaissance and Baroque composers; the concert recording Live at Birdland on ECM; and Windmills of Your Mind, featuring guitarist Bill Frisell, on Winter & Winter.
A profoundly influential presence on the creative-music landscape, Motian died in New York City in the early hours of November 22, 2011, at the age of eighty, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone-marrow disorder. Further Explorations, featuring pianist Chick Corea and bassist Eddie Gomez, was released posthumously by Concord in January 2012. Two years later ECM issued the archival Hamburg ’72, documenting a trio performance with Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden. When Will the Blues Leave, issued in 2019, captured a 1999 Swiss concert by Paul Bley’s trio that also included bassist Gary Peacock.
