Paul Bley
Paul Bley recording solo piano in 2006
Background information
Birth name	Paul Bley
Born	(1932-11-10) November 10, 1932 (age 79)
Origin	Montreal, Canada
Genres	Free jazz Avant-garde jazz Post bop
Instruments	Piano
Associated acts	Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Giuffre, Steve Swallow, Chet Baker, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian, Annette Peacock, Charlie Haden, John Scofield, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Bill Frisell, John Abercrombie, Michael Urbaniak, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius
Notable instruments
piano, Moog synthesizer, ARP synthesizer, Fender Rhodes

Paul Bley, CM (born November 10, 1932) is a pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing.

Biography [link]

Paul Bley was born in Montreal, Canada, his parents were Betty Marcovitch, an immigrant from Romania, and Joe Bley, owner of an embroidery factory.^[1][2] Bley has been a long-time resident of the United States. His music characteristically features strong senses both of melodic voicing and space.

In the 1950s he founded the Jazz Workshop in Montreal, performing and recording there with Charlie Parker. He also performed with Lester Young and Ben Webster at that time.

In 1953 he conducted for Charles Mingus on the Charles Mingus and his Orchestra album and the same year Mingus produced the Introducing Paul Bley album with Mingus and Art Blakey. In 1960 Bley recorded on piano with the Charles Mingus Group.

In 1958, he hired Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins to play at the Hillcrest Club in California.

In the early 1960s he was part of the Jimmy Giuffre 3, a 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 his ex-wife Carla Bley, the group's music moved towards free improvisation based on close empathy.

During the same period Bley was touring and recording with Sonny Rollins, which culminated with the RCA Victor album, Sonny Meets Hawk! with Coleman Hawkins.

In 1964 Bley was instrumental in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild - a co-operative organisation which brought together many free jazz musicians in New York: Roswell Rudd, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, his ex-wife Carla Bley, Michael Mantler, Sun Ra, among others. The guild organized weekly concerts and created a forum for the "jazz revolution" of 1964.^[3]

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 at Philharmonic Hall in New York City on Dec. 26, 1969.^[4]

This led into a period of the "Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show", a group where he worked with songwriter Annette Peacock.

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 which issued LPs and videos documenting the solo piano recordings by Sun Ra and other works of free jazz with Jimmy Giuffre, Lee Konitz, Gary Peacock, Lester Bowie, John Gilmore, Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Steve Lacy and others.

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 has continued to tour internationally and record prodigiously, with well over a hundred CDs released. In 1999 his autobiography, Stopping Time: Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz was published. In 2003 Time Will Tell: Conversations with Paul Bley was published. And in 2004 Paul Bley: la logica del caso (Paul Bley: The Logic of Chance) was published in Italian. In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.^[5]

Discography [link]

This section requires expansion.

As leader [link]

America Records

• 1971: The Fabulous Paul Bley Quintet (Live recording from Hillcrest Club, Los Angeles 1958)
• 1972: Improvisie

ECM Records

• 1970: Paul Bley with Gary Peacock
• 1971: Ballads
• 1972: Open, to Love
• 1986: Fragments
• 1987: The Paul Bley Quartet
• 1991: In the Evenings Out There
• 1994: Time Will Tell (with Evan Parker and Barre Phillips)
• 1999: Not Two, Not One (with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian)
• 2000: Sankt Gerold (with Evan Parker and Barre Phillips)
• 2007: Solo in Mondsee

Freedom

• 1970: Dual Unity (with Annette Peacock, Han Bennink, Mario Pavone, Laurence Cook)^[6]
• 1975: Copenhagen and Haarlem (Live recordings 1965 and 1966)

Improvising Artists (Bley's own label)

• 1974: Jaco
• 1975: Quiet Song
• 1975: Alone, Again
• 1975: Turning Point (with John Gilmore, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian), orig. Savoy mono recordings, March 9, 1964
• 1976: Virtuosi
• 1977: Japan Suite
• 1977: Coleman Classics Vol. 1 (Four more tracks of the Hillcrest Club recording from 1958)
• 1977: Axis
• 1978: IAI Festival

Justin Time Records

• 1987: Solo
• 1991: A Musing (with Jon Ballantyne)
• 1993: Sweet Time
• 1993: Double Time
• 1993: Know Time
• 1994: Outside in
• 1996: Touche (with Kenny Wheeler)
• 2001: Basics
• 2004: Nothing to Declare
• 2008: About Time

Postcards Records

• 1994: Synth Thesis
• 1994: What If (with Bruce Ditmas as leader, John Abercrombie, Sam Rivers, Dominic Richards)
• 1996: Music for the Millennium (with Ralph Simon as leader, Gary Peacock, Julian Priester)

Soul Note

• 1983: Tango Palace
• 1983: Sonor
• 1985: Hot (with John Scofield)
• 1987: Notes (with Paul Motian)
• 1988: Live at Sweet Basil (with John Abercrombie)
• 1990: Memoirs (with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian)
• 1992: Mindset (with Gary Peacock)
• 1994: Chaos

SteepleChase Records

• 1972: Solo Piano
• 1973: Paul Bley/NHØP (with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen)
• 1985: Questions
• 1985: My Standard
• 1986: Live & Live Again
• 1987: Indian Summer
• 1988: Solo Piano
• 1988: The Nearness of You
• 1989: Rejoicing
• 1989: Bebopbebopbebopbebop
• 1991: Plays Carla Bley
• 1992: Caravan Suite
• 1992: At Copenhagen Jazz House
• 1993: If We May
• 1994: Speachless
• 1995: Reality Check
• 1998: Notes on Ornette

Other labels

• 1953: Introducing Paul Bley (Debut)
• 1962: Footloose! (Savoy)
• 1964: Barrage (with Marshall Allen, Dewey Johnson, Eddie Gomez, Milford Graves), ESP
• 1965: Closer (with Barry Altschul, Steve Swallow), ESP
• 1965: Touching (Fontana)
• 1965: Blood (Fontana)
• 1968: Mr. Joy (Limelight Records)
• 1973: Scorpio (with David Holland, Barry Altschul), Milestone
• 1983: Tears, Owl Records
• 1990: Partners (with Gary Peacock), Owl
• 1993: Homage to Carla, Owl

As sideman [link]

With Jimmy Giuffre

• Thesis (1961)
• Free Fall (1962)
• Fusion (1962) all rereleased on ECM
• Emphasis & Flight 1961
• The Life of a Trio 2 volumes
• Fly Away Little Bird
• Conversations with a Goose, Owl Records

With Sonny Rollins

• Tokyo 1963 (Rare Live Recordings, 1963)

With Marion Brown

• Sweet Earth Flying (Impulse!, 1974)

With Charlie Haden

• 1989: The Montreal Tapes: with Paul Bley and Paul Motian (Verve)

With John Surman

• 1991: Adventure Playground (ECM)

References [link]

External links [link]

• Paul Bley homepage
• biography (in German and English) and bibliography (in English)