![]() ![]() In my case, I’m most grateful for the five studio albums she made Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, starting in 1970 with its eponymous debut album, continuing with Ballad for the Fallen (1983), Dream Keeper (1990) and Not in Our Name (2005), and ending with Time/Life in 2016, all of them keeping the precious flame of resistance alight. ![]() The four pieces recorded in 2019 and making up the short suite that gave the album its name are titled as follows: “Life Goes On” / “On” / “And On” / “And Then One Day”.Īnd then one day Carla was gone, her death making us think of the music she leaves behind, all of it suffused by her unique personality. Carla, who was one of jazz’s greatest composers and arrangers, died this week, aged 87. It seems so true to Carla Bley’s nature, such a characteristically mordant mixture of the sad and the funny, that her last album should have been called Life Goes On. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Carla Bley during one of the recording sessions for ‘Escalator Over the Hill’ This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Andrew Limbong, NPR News.Ĭopyright © 2023 NPR. With music, she told NPR in 2016, you can get away with stuff that makes no sense in words. LIMBONG: These recordings prominently centered her piano-playing, something she was never fully comfortable with, but that was the vehicle she chose to tell her stories. (SOUNDBITE OF CARLA BLEY, ANDY SHEPPARD AND STEVE SWALLOW'S "ANDANDO EL TIEMPO: CAMINO AL VOLVER") LIMBONG: Her later work with her longtime husband, bassist Steve Swallow, leaned more towards spare and minimalist. LIMBONG: The music she wrote could be big and bombastic or pensive and whimsical. As a little church girl, I was in heaven. ![]() In a 2016 interview with NPR, she said that was his loss, but she kind of understood.īLEY: We smoked and drank and used drugs. Her father was a church organist and disapproved of her playing jazz so much that he never saw her perform. LIMBONG: Bley was born in 1936, in Oakland, Calif. And this is a dedication of mine, and I'm as interested in it as I am in my own music at the moment. LIMBONG: After some years in the trenches of the New York City jazz scene, Bley co-founded New Music Distribution Service, a nonprofit record distributor, to help independent artists sell their boundary-pushing records, circumventing a system she grew disillusioned with.īLEY: And since we sell the records for quite a high price, the musicians are finding it able to survive without large record companies. But there's also a moment in this 1973 NPR interview where the host commends her for her work as a capital-A administrator, and it sounds like she couldn't be happier.ĬARLA BLEY: To be able to function as a musician and as an administrator is a compliment that I would never have thought I could have received in my whole life because, you know, most musicians spoil themselves as far as getting practical things done. ![]() LIMBONG: By all accounts, Bley was a capital-A artist. (SOUNDBITE OF CARLA BLEY'S "HOTEL OVERTURE") NPR's Andrew Limbong has this appreciation.ĪNDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: Carla Bley was an experimentalist who pushed the boundaries of her creative form all her life, as evidenced by her sprawling, diverse and ambitious jazz opera "Escalator Over The Hill." According to her husband, she died of complications from brain cancer. Bley died this week in her home near Woodstock, N.Y. This was in the 1950s, and since then she wrote hundreds of compositions, some of which are now considered standards. The composer Carla Bley moved to New York City when she was 17, sleeping on benches and working menial jobs just to be close to jazz music. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |