Carla Bley
b. Carla Borg, 11 May 1938, Oakland, California, USA. Bley began to learn piano from her father, who was a piano teacher and church organist, at an early age, but discontinued the formal lessons when she was five years old. Her main musical experience was in church choirs and as a church organist until she became interested in jazz at the age of 17. On moving to New York City she had to work as a waitress, unable to earn a living either as a pianist or composer. In 1957 she married Paul Bley and from 1959 began writing many fine compositions, still using her maiden name initially: thus, the composer credit was to Borg when George Russell first recorded one of her pieces (Dance Class) in 1960. Russell used several of her tunes, as did husband Paul. As her reputation grew, her compositions were sought by the likes of Jimmy Giuffre, Art Farmer, Gary Burton and Charlie Haden (with whom she would work on his various Liberation Music Orchestra projects). In 1964 Bill Dixon invited her to be a charter member of the Jazz Composers’ Guild, and at the end of the year she and Michael Mantler, who was later to become her second husband, led the Jazz Composers’ Guild Orchestra in a series of concerts at Judson Hall. Her critical standing really began to blossom after she joined the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra Association, founded by Mantler in 1966 on the model of the defunct Guild. The Association and its associated Orchestra (JCO) gave writers the opportunity to write works of an epic scale for large forces, and Carla grasped the opportunity. Two of her works, A GENUINE TONG FUNERAL (Dark Opera Without Words) (recorded by a band centred on the Gary Burton Quartet) and the massive ESCALATOR OVER THE HILL (taking up six album sides) were conceived as a kind of music theatre, and were widely acclaimed: ESCALATOR in particular remains a genre in itself. Many of her small-scale pieces have also achieved standard status, including Mother Of The Dead Man (originally part of TONG FUNERAL), Closer, Ida Lupino and Sing Me Softly Of The Blues. She became a full-time musician in 1964, working with Pharoah Sanders and Charles Moffett at the beginning of that year. From December she co-led the JCO with Mantler. Her first orchestral piece, Roast, dates from this time, but she was also heavily committed to free jazz at this point. After the JCO appeared at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival, Bley organized the Jazz Realities Quintet, which also included Mantler and Steve Lacy, to tour Europe. It was during another tour of Europe, this time with Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald in 1966, that she became disillusioned with free jazz, a change of heart that led ultimately to the production of FUNERAL. For some years she concentrated on writing, though there was a spell with Jack Bruce's band in 1974, but from 1976 she again began leading a band on a regular basis. Throughout the '80s she continued to play keyboards and to lead medium to small-sized bands but, as she pointed out herself on a visit to London in 1990, although she is not among the great pianists she is a unique writer. Her association with composer and former Gary Burton bassist Steve Swallow contributed to the flavour of her successful and accessible Sextet, which toured regularly in the late '80s. While the critics (though not the jazz public) began to grow cool towards the Sextet by the end of the decade, her tour with the Very Big Carla Bley Band at the end of 1990 confirmed that she had not lost her individual writing voice, nor her ability to deal convincingly with orchestral forces. Bley's contribution on the ‘administrative’ side of music deserves recognition too. She has been part of the movement to give musicians a degree of control, self-determination and independence from the industry's establishment. With Paul Bley she was a member of the Jazz Composers Guild, a co-operative formed in autumn 1964, and subsequently helped establish the JCOA. She and Mantler also set up two record labels, Watt for their own recordings and JCOA Records to promote the work of others. Her compositions have been recorded by a number of musicians.