Open, to Love, title of one of the most iconic albums of Paul Bley, true masterpiece for solo piano, and could work as an epithet for a career that crossed all major currents of modern jazz, free to post bop.
Hailed as one of the great innovators of jazz, for her deeply personal vision, the virtuosity and intuition, Bley has built a career spanning more than six decades in which only one thing was certain – everything you touched was viewed under the prism of love, a central theme in his work. Died last Sunday, 3rd, surrounded by family, as announced in a statement on Tuesday, by his daughter Vanessa Bley.
gifted musician, began early to play and record, having a long and successful career that led him to share the stage and the studio with many of the great names in the history of jazz like Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Ben Webster, Charles Mingus, Lester Young, Chet Baker, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp, Pat Metheny, Lee Konitz, Bill Evans, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, among many others.
Your music, impressionistic and poetic, has adapted so well to the free jazz revolution of the 60s, which was an integral part, as to the next decade post-bop or the sound mercurial and contemplative characteristic of the ECM label, with which it has a prolific relationship since 1972.
In discography in his own name with about 100 titles are countless works reference, including albums Barrage, Closer and Ramblin ‘ (1964, 1965 and 1966, respectively), the aforementioned solo piano recordings Open, to Love (1972 ), the album
Of all his concerts could be expected, the interpretation of known – but not always recognizable – standard Jazz, the exploitation of own themes interspersed with imaginative improvised passages. Belonged to a rare class musicians for whom music is a slow process of evolution and change, metamorphosis, creating these its own musical logic, then the subverting time and time again, defying any kind of theoretical analysis.
Your unique style, derived from an early stage where plunged into the bop universe, strongly influenced by Bud Powell, was marked by an extreme freedom which is balanced and complemented lyricism more light or the darkest of abstractions, often interspersed labyrinthine structures whose shapes Bley dominated completely.
In your head, the legacies of Powell, Bill Evans, Debussy, Bartok, Lennie Tristano and Cecil Taylor, converged Expectro a long personal tornado. In conversation with Doug Fischer, referring to the famous Bley’s piano solo on the theme All the Things You Are , the disc Sonny Meets Hawk (1963), Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins, Pat Metheny commented:.. “When I heard that solo, a whole new universe of harmonic possibilities opened up to me yet today, decades later, I think this soil as a major in jazz history Even a non-musician can feel that something extraordinary is happening At one level is extremely complex, but on the other hand is also quite handy, very open Bley simply leaves every musical idea go his way, reaching its natural conclusion -.. in the end, something very personal It becomes fully universal. ”
Born in Montreal, Canada, November 10, 1932, Bley began his studies on the violin and is considered the age of five a true child prodigy on the instrument. At eight starts studying piano and soon had his own group, being asked, with just over 17 years, replace Oscar Peterson in his mythical regular residence in Alberta Lounge in Montreal.
He moved the following year to New York to pursue his studies at the renowned Juilliard School, playing in clubs with mythical figures such as trumpeter Roy Eldridge. It’s that time his encounter with the giant Webster, Rollins and Parker also part of the legend past seasons at Lennie Tristano’s studio, whose ideas and musical concepts were to leave a permanent mark on his music.
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