Carla Bley, Jazz Composer And Pianist, Dies At 87
Carla Bley, an influential jazz composer and pianist, died of complications from brain cancer at her home in Willow, New York. He was 87 years old. Bly's partner of more than 30 years, bassist Steve Swallow, confirmed the news to the New York Times.
A pioneer of the free jazz movement, Blay led a big band with prominent New York musicians, a sextet with Larry Willis and Hiram Bullock, and a chamber trio with Swallow and Andy Shepard. Blay was the original conductor and arranger of the Liberation Music Orchestra, a group founded by Charlie Haden in 1969, and continued to lead it after Haden's death in 2014.
He is best known for his 1971 jazz opera, Escalator Over the Hill, which helped establish his unique style of jazz opera, featuring artists such as Linda Ronstadt, Jack Bruce and Charlie Haden. In 1973, the British publication Melody Maker named it Album of the Year and it received the Grand Prix du Disque, France's most prestigious award for recorded music.
From elegant ballads like “Lawns” to cinematic pieces like “Flour Carnivore,” Blay’s work has crossed genres and made him one of jazz’s most versatile musicians. In addition to producing his own albums, he wrote and co-produced all the songs on Nick Mason's Fantasy Sports, the Pink Floyd drummer's debut solo album.
He also founded several labels, JCOA Records and distributor ECM Watt, which released the work of Don Cherry and Cecil Taylor, among others. With Michael Mantler, Blay founded a new nonprofit music distribution service that operated from 1972 to 1990 to bring their labels to a wider audience.
His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 1972 and recognition from the National Foundation for Jazz Masters in 2015. His most recent album, Life Goes On, a collaboration with Shepard and Swallow, was released in 2020.
Born May 11, 1936, in Oakland, California, Lovela Mae Borg moved to New York in the 1950s and worked as a cigarette vendor in Birdland, where she got her start on the jazz scene. There she met jazz pianist Paul Bly, whom she married in 1957. After divorcing in 1967, Blay married trumpeter Mantler.
Bly is survived by a daughter from this marriage, singer Karen Mantler and Swallow.
