Paul Bley
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Paul Bley is a free jazz pianist born in Montreal, Canada in 1932 and long-time resident in the USA. His music characteristically features strong senses both of melodic voicing and space.
As well as being a distinctive and innovative musician himself, he has worked with a number of important musicians at key points.
In 1957, he played with Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman in California.
In the early 1960s he was part of the Jimmy Giuffre 3, a drummerless clarinet, piano and bass trio with bassist Steve Swallow. The quiet understatement of this music makes it possible to overlook its degree of innovation. As well as a repertoire introducing compositions by Carla Bley, the group's music moved towards free improvisation based on close empathy.
In 1964 Bley was instrumental in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild - a co-operative organisation which brought together many of the most radical musicians in New York.
Bley had long been interested in expanding the palette of his music using unconventional sounds (such as playing directly on the piano-strings). It was therefore consistent that he took an interest in new electronic possibilities appearing in the late 1960s. He pioneered the use of Moog synthesizers, performing with them before a live audience for the first time.
This led into a period of the Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show, a group where he worked with songwriter Annette Peacock on bass and vocals.
Subsequently Bley returned to a predominant focus on the piano itself.
During the 1970s, Bley, in partnership with videographer Carol Goss, was responsible for an important multi-media initiative, Improvising Artists Inc which issued important LPs and videos documenting the early group with Ornette Coleman, solo piano recordings by Sun Ra and other works of free jazz.
Bley and Goss are credited in a Billboard Magazine cover story with the first "music video" as a result of the recorded and live performance collaborations they produced with jazz musicians and video artists.
Bley was featured in the 1981 documentary film Imagine the Sound, in which he performs and discusses the history of his music.
Bley was an important influence on Keith Jarrett.
[edit] Selected discography
- Coleman Classics (with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins), IAI, recorded 1958
- Barrage (with Marshall Allen, Dewey Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Milford Graves), ESP Disk, recorded 1964
- Touching (with Kent Carter, Barry Altschul), Debut, 1965
- Dual Unity (with Annette Peacock, Han Bennink, Mario Pavone, Laurence Cook), Freedom, recorded 1970
- With Gary Peacock, ECM, 1970
- Open, to Love (solo piano), ECM, 1972
- Paul Bley/NHØP (with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen), SteepleChase Records, 1973
- The Paul Bley Quartet (with John Surman, Bill Frisell and Paul Motian), ECM, recorded 1987
- Partners (with Gary Peacock), 1990
- Not two, not one (with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian), ECM, 1999
- Nothing to Declare (solo piano), 2004
