Paul Bley: November 10, 1932 – January 3, 2016 — R.I.P.

[rawac]

http://www.jazzwisemagazine.com/breaking-news/14006-influential-canadian-jazz-pianist-paul-bley-dies-aged-83

[bluenoter]

Thank you, Ralf.

Several websites have quoted an "official" announcement and added that more coverage will follow.

At http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/music/jazzblog/r-i-p-paul-bley is this article (which has been updated several times and whose headline now reads simply "RIP, Paul Bley"):



The Ottawa Citizen article goes on to quote statements from a number of musicians—both reactions to the news and previous praise for Paul Bley. I encourage you to visit the source and read them.


Now in progress: a 27-hour Paul Bley Memorial Broadcast on WKCR 89.9FM NY (but broadcast only; WKCR has suspended its online streaming)


ECM, which had originally quoted Vanessa Bley's "official" announcement on behalf of the family, has now posted a statement of its own, "Open, To Love: Paul Bley 1932–2016," both on its (public) Facebook page and in the News section of its website (dated 05.01.2016, European style).


R.I.P., Paul Bley
 

[Ron Thorne]

01/05/16
Pianist Paul Bley Dies at 83
Uncompromising, influential "pianists' pianist"

By JazzTimes

Paul Bley, an influential, leading-edge pianist for more than seven decades, died Jan. 3, at age 83. Bley passed of natural causes at home in his winter residence in Stuart, Fla., with his family present. Family members and an executive at ECM Records, one of the labels for which Bley recorded, confirmed his death.



In a 2008 JazzTimes review of Bley’s About Time album, writer Thomas Conrad stated, “Paul Bley is a separate category of jazz piano. No one else thinks like him.” Whether performing in his preferred trio format, solo or in other configurations, Bley was praised for maintaining strong lyricism and subtlety even within his freest playing. “After a while, you can only play yourself,” Bley told another JT writer.

The official statement from Vanessa Bley, Paul Bley’s daughter, said he was “preeminently a pianists’ pianist.”

Born Hyman Paul Bley on Nov. 10, 1932, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and adopted by Betty Marcovitch and Joe Bley, Paul Bley began music studies at 5 and at 13 formed the Buzzy Bley Band. At 17, the family statement noted, he “took over for Oscar Peterson at the Alberta Lounge, invited Charlie Parker to play at the Montreal Jazz Workshop, which he co-founded, made a film with Stan Kenton and then headed to NYC to attend Juilliard.”

In 1953, Bley conducted for Charles Mingus, who reciprocated by producing the Introducing Paul Bley album, featuring Mingus on bass and drummer Art Blakey. The album was released on Mingus’ Debut label, and was followed by a long string of releases on labels such as EmArcy, GNP, Savoy, ESP-Disk’, Polydor, ECM, Improvising Artists, SteepleChase, Justin Time, Soul Note, Hat Hut and others.

During his career, Bley also played and recorded with Ornette Coleman, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian, Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, Jimmy Giuffre, Charlie Haden, Lee Konitz, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Dave Holland, Bill Frisell and others.

Beginning in the 1960s, Bley moved further away from bebop and straight-ahead into the realm of free jazz and embraced electronic sounds, working with the then-new Moog synthesizer. For a residency at Los Angeles’ Hillcrest club in 1958, Bley’s quintet included emerging avant-gardists Coleman, Don Cherry, Haden and Billy Higgins. A statement issued by ECM Records said, “In 1961 Paul was at the quieter end of the free revolution, as a member of the Jimmy Giuffre Trio. This group, with Steve Swallow on bass, posited a kind of avant-garde chamber jazz which would become practically a template for thoughtful improvisation of the future.” Bley was also involved in the formation of the Jazz Composers Guild, which attracted fellow free jazz artists.

He also collaborated with two musicians/composers he married, Carla Bley and Annette Peacock. He later married videographer Carol Goss; the couple remained together for 43 years.

In the 1990s, Bley joined the faculty of the New England Music Conservatory.


Source

[bluenoter]

http://jazztimes.com/articles/171691-matthew-shipp-remembers-paul-bley



Each year, in our March issue, we ask prominent musicians to pay tribute to fellow artists who have passed in the previous year. This piece appeared in the March 2016 edition of JazzTimes.

Paul Bley had no mental limits and no locks in his subconscious mind. He was comfortable being himself in any context. That’s what was so inspiring and empowering about him: He was always organic, whatever that means to you. If organic means that you’re not stylized and there might be some imperfections that seep in, that’s what gives the music its beauty and grace and charm. That’s what he exemplified.

My guess at a more accurate transcription:
If organic means that you’re not stylized and there might be some imperfections that seep in—that’s what gives the music its beauty and grace and charm—that’s what he exemplified.

Paul was an extremely unique figure in jazz history, and an extremely naturalistic improviser. When I think of a naturalistic improviser I think of Lester Young, and Paul Bley had a similar thing, where even though he was studied his music doesn’t sound studied. He also went in and out of so many different periods, whether a post-Mingus thing or Third Stream or Ornette. You couldn’t pigeonhole him. He networked and dealt with so many different musicians. His open-ended mindset held him back commercially, but I don’t think he really cared. He just kept doing his thing and stayed true to himself, from the beginning to the end.

He embodied an approach [in which] every time you sit down at the instrument you’re starting from scratch, in a good way. It’s as Zen an approach to improvisation as I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how he came to it so strongly and so naturally, but whatever he was playing—and it could be a standard or something freeform—he always seemed to bring a beginner’s mind to it: Here I am, in the now, and it doesn’t matter who I’m playing with. The important thing was that whatever music was unfolding right then. That’s so rare in jazz. He seemed to always approach music without any preconceptions. If considering yourself an avant-garde player is a preconception, he even seemed to get rid of that one.

He didn’t believe in practicing, which was interesting, but he was a virtuoso pianist at a very young age. [He said,] I don’t practice anymore because every instrument has a very different personality, so I’m not preparing myself to confront the instrument I will meet in this concert hall. When you listen to different albums of his, on different instruments, in different studios and concert halls, there are times when he generates a completely different personality. He had that talent of going to a different piano and quickly figuring out what that instrument can do and what the personality of that instrument is.

Paul Bley didn’t have a home. He had a roving mind. It was never about free jazz, or even trying to find freedom within bebop; it was about being Paul Bley—whatever it meant to be Paul Bley, in whatever context, whether it was playing with John Gilmore on an ESP-Disk’ album or picking up the synthesizer or playing with the Jimmy Giuffre 3. He offers the modern pianist a model that doesn’t have a genre-specific thing to it: It’s just improvisational music at a very high level.