"It seemed to me her ears were always open to what was happening at each point in time," Cardenas reflected in an email, "and her compositions reflected this, while always still recognizably Carla Bley."īeyond her consistency, Bley was known for her humor. Her compositions have continued to be recorded by numerous artists well into this millennium: In 2022, guitarist Steve Cardenas, saxophonist Ted Nash and bassist Ben Allison released the tribute Healing Power: The Music Of Carla Bley on Sunnyside Records. In addition to Swallow, Bley is survived by her daughter with Mantler, the pianist and vocalist Karen Mantler. Throughout the years, she kept evolving - recording three albums for ECM in a trio with Swallow and British saxophonist Andy Sheppard, and leading a horn-heavy ensemble in the 1980s and '90s, one of her most enduring projects. Recorded between 19, the album featured more than 40 contributors, among them bassists Charlie Haden and Jack Bruce, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, guitarist John McLaughlin, trumpeter Don Cherry, keyboardist Don Preston and vocalist Sheila Jordan.īley and Mantler founded their own record company, WATT, in 1972, and it became her main outlet from 1974's Tropic Appetites through 2009's Carla's Christmas Carols, the latter made with the Partyka Brass Quintet. Next came the mammoth three-LP set Escalator Over the Hill, co-credited to Bley and poet Paul Haines, and released by the JCO house label. Her own recording career began in 1966 with an album for Fontana, featuring Mantler and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. Her pieces could be ethereally beautiful or subversively brash, but always found a grandeur without tilting into pretension, a quality reflected in her economical piano playing. Over the next decade-plus, artists including Jimmy Giuffre, Don Ellis, Art Farmer, Steve Kuhn, Gary Burton and Tony Williams would all record her work. Her first recorded piece, "Bent Eagle," came courtesy of George Russell in 1960 for his Riverside album Stratusphunk. It was during her time in New York that she met her first husband, fellow pianist Paul Bley, who encouraged her to begin composing. She left high school before her junior year and soon was in New York, where she found work - and valuable exposure - as a cigarette seller at the Birdland Jazz Club. Her father, Emil Borg, was a piano teacher and church organist, and gave Bley her first lessons. Carla Bley was born Lovella May Borg on May 11, 1936, in Oakland, Calif.
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