Carla Bley - :rarum Xv: Selected Recordings

Normally, an artist's music speaks for itself. This is no less true with Carla Bley. However, she's such a unique-lookin' individual that I thought the visual applied: because her music is one of a kind as well.

A pianist/keyboardist, composer and all-around jazz alchemist, Carla Bley builds musical stories that live at opposing ends of several emotional scales.

Sounds high-fallutin', eh? It's not.

Here are a few of the emotional spectra traversed by a typical Bley composition: humor and introversion, darkness and elation, sadness and nearly violent joy.

Violent joy? Hey, didn't Mingus write the book on that stuff? Yes. Bley just put her twist on it.

Carla Bley has performed with and composed for an impressive list of musicians including: Paul Bley, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, Gary Burton, Steve Swallow, Charlie Haden, and Pharoah Sanders. More impressive still is the wide range of ensembles: from simple duos to sextets to double-quartets to big band. All of the music carries her distinctive signature.

Bley's :rarum collection contains selections representing nearly all aspects of her 30 years under the ECM umbrella. The humor is evident from the first few bars of the opening track "Baseball" (from 1999's 4x4). It's a jazz meditation (sort of) that uses "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" as inspiration. It's funny and fun.

The rest of the disc moves chronologically backward through Bley's career. "Major" is a piano/bass duet with Steve Swallow taken from the live Are We There Yet? "End of Vienna" is a track from the quirky Fancy Chamber Music. Larger ensemble compositions are represented by "On The Stage In Cages" (from Big Band Theory) and the title track from Fleur Carnivore. The slightly smaller group from Social Studies presents "Walking Batteriewoman" (I like the mischievous version on Duets: Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, but that's my problem).

The final trio of songs begins in the 1980's with the tune "Silence", written by Charlie Haden and found on his The Ballad Of The Fallen. Next up is "Why", from what is probably Bley's most 'famous' record: Escalator Over The Hill. "Why" is a weird, almost Zappa-esque, waltz-time song with vocals by Linda Rondstadt. "Ictus", the last selection, is the most 'outside' composition in the set. Bley composed it for the Jimmy Giuffre 3 (with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow).

Once again, the ECM :rarum series has come up with an excellent distillation of an artist's career. To me, allowing the artist to choose makes all the difference. Check out what Carla has to say about her ECM longevity:

And Manfred Eicher, with similar single-mindedness, has never decided to exchange me for someone who would sell more albums or better reflect his taste in music. Like a permissive parent, he has put up with my various musical directions without complaint, even though some of them must have caused him concern.

Too bad there aren't more record labels employing that kind of thought process.

(First posted on Mark Is Cranky)

Article Author: Mark Saleski

Mark Saleski is a writer and music obsessive based out of the Monadnock region of New Hampshire. He has contributed to Jazz.com and also writes reviews for Blogcritics.org. He produces the weekly feature The Friday Morning Listen. …

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