As a musician and composer, her flair for the outrageous and her engaging sense of humor, combined with a profound dedication to her art and audience, have continually placed her on music's cutting edge. Addresses: c/o Ted Kurland Associates, 173 Brighton Ave., Boston, MA 02134.Ĭarla Bley has been a vital force in the jazz world for more than 30 years. Education: Attended public schools until age 15. "I've gotten down to a trio, but I'm still trying to get this one last grandiose idea recorded.Born May 11, 1938, in Oakland, CA daughter of Emil Carl Borg (a piano teacher and choir director) and Arlene Anderson (a musician) married Paul Bley (a jazz pianist), 1959 (divorced, 1967) married Michael Mantler (a composer and trumpeter), 1967 (separated) children: Karen. "It's big band and boys choir," she says. Even though she's just released a new album, Bley's eyes really light up when she talks about her next project, which she'll record in a few weeks in Germany. What I was doing was just kind of poking at her until she got a little faster at the process, that's all."Īnd her pace as a composer hasn't slowed down as she enters her ninth decade. But most of that time has been spent laboring mightily over what the next note is going to be. "She's always spent a great deal of time at the piano. "Actually, that's an overstatement," Swallow says. She credits her husband with teaching her how to become a piano player, but he politely disagrees. "The playing thing happened really reluctantly and slowly," she says. Bley insists she's not a natural performer. But for the last 20 years, she has mostly settled down into a smaller group: a trio with Swallow on bass and saxophonist Andy Sheppard. And I think she's been able to do that somehow by force of her personality, and the strength of her music."īley composed and arranged for Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, and led her own big band. "I don't see her making compromises at all. "She's very, very clear about what she wants," she says. She wrote a book about Carla Bley, and says you shouldn't let the high-wattage smile fool you. "She's always got a smile on her face while she's directing these huge bands of these amazing players," says Amy Beal, a music professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her big breakout as a composer was a sprawling 1971 jazz opera called Escalator Over the Hill that involved dozens of musicians, including Jack Bruce, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian and Linda Ronstadt. "If someone asked me for a pack of Luckies, I would say, 'Wait until the intermission.' I was not a good cigarette girl."īut Bley's larger career was just getting started. "I would stand right in front of the bandstand and hear all the great bands, all the great musicians - and sold very few cigarettes," she says. She remembers in particular her gig as a cigarette girl at Birdland. "As a little church girl, I was in heaven."īley arrived in New York in the mid-1950s when she arrived, and took menial jobs at local jazz joints so she could hear the music. "It was just, really, the devil's music - and boy, was that great." she says. It's a perfect symbiotic relationship."īley was 17 when she moved to New York, lured by the jazz she'd heard on the radio and in clubs in California. "This is perfect for the improviser, because then the improviser can take that and add back again what has been taken away. "Carla developed a very spare, pared down kind of writing," he says. They've also been married for the last 30. And I'm still working on it, taking them away."īass player Steve Swallow has worked with Bley for 50 years. And he said, 'That's too many dots.' So I took most of them away. And depending on where you put the dots, that's the note you're gonna hear.' So the next lesson I showed up with the page full of dots. "He gave me a sheet of music paper," she says, "and he said, 'You just put dots. Bley remembers writing her first piece of music for her father when she was only 6. She was 3 years old when she learned to play piano from her father, who was a piano teacher and choirmaster in Oakland, Calif. Recognized last year as a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts, Bley is one of few women to have exerted a consistent influence on the male-dominated world of modern jazz for half a century. "This was the perfect opportunity to play it," she says plainly. But Bley did something riskier: an untested piece she'd only just finished. She could have played any of her compositions that have become jazz standards, or a piece from her new record. On May 11, Carla Bley celebrated her 80th birthday with a concert in New York.
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