#Carla Bley

[toiletpapercosmos]

RIP Carla Bley, featured here on the cover of Jazz Magazine, Spring 1978. Cover design by Bob Delboy.

#carla bley #jazz magazine #1978 #bob delboy

[20th-century-personalities]

The composer, arranger, bandleader and pianist Carla Bley in performance in 1982. She was branded an avant-gardist early in her career, but her music always maintained a place for tonal harmony / David Corio/Redferns, via Getty Images

Ms. Bley’s influential body of work included delicate chamber miniatures and rugged, blaring fanfares, with a lot of varied terrain in between. She was an irrepressibly original composer, arranger and pianist responsible for more than 60 years of wily provocations in and around jazz.

#Carla Bley #music #jazz #1982

[jazzplusplus]

Jazz Hot #394 (France) - avril 1982 - Carla Bley

RIP Carla Bley (1936 - 2023)

#jazz #journal #jazz hot #carla bley #1982 #rip

[protoslacker]

Rüdiger Krause Carla Bley Steve Swallow Lawns

Rudiger Krause

"With her iconic bangs, sharp features and free-flowing sense of the absurd, Carla Bley, who died Oct. 17 of brain cancer at age 87, was unable to go unnoticed in the male-dominated jazz world of the ’70s and ’80s. Her distinctive, sometimes-absurdist/always-adventurous compositions made her impossible to forget."

James Hale in Downbeat. Carla Bley, Provocative Composer-Pianist, Dies at Age 87

#music #carla bley #RIP #Youtube

[de-salva]

#R.I.P. #RIP #Rest in Peace #Carla Bley

[jt1674]

#carla bley #tropic appetites #gato barbieri

[sivavakkiyar]

still can’t believe she covered the AIR theme, which by the way was written by a European Jewish man (who was related by marriage to Kafka):

[link to article]

[link to Carla Bley’s piece on youtube]

#carla Bley #walter kaufmann #all India radio #Spotify

[cosmonautroger]

Carla Bley

#carla bley

[the-garrincha-universe]

Carla Bley

#carla bley

[spilladabalia]

Carla Bley (11/05/1936-17/10/2023)

Photos Getty/Roger Rossmeyer/Corbis/VCG

#carla bley #jazz #jazz rock #free jazz #progressive rock

[musicktoplayinthedark]

Carla Bley

#carla bley

[shihlun]

"Walking Woman" personified by Snow's friend, collaborator and fellow musician, pianist "Carla Bley".

Michael Snow

- "Carla Bley" Photolithograph

1965

#michael snow #carla bley #walking woman #photolithograph #1965 #new york eye and ear control #free jazz #jazz

[lascitasdelashoras]

Carla Bley Band - European Tour

#carla bley #musica #jazz

[musicwithoutborders]

Carla Bley · Phil Woods, Lost In The Stars. The Music Of Kurt Weill, 1985

#Kurt Weill #jazz #Carla Bley #Phil Woods

[jt1674]

Alto Saxophone – Jimmy Lyons Baritone Saxophone – Chris Woods Bass – Charlie Haden Bass Trombone – Jack Jeffers Clarinet – Perry Robinson Drums – Paul Motian Electric Guitar – John McLaughlin French Horn – Sharon Freeman Piano – Carla Bley Tenor Saxophone – Gato Barbieri Trombone – Roswell Rudd Trumpet – Michael Mantler Tuba – John Buckingham Voice – Linda Ronstadt Voice – Charlie Haden

#carla bley #paul haines #escalator over the hill #linda ronstadt #charlie haden #michael mantler #roswell rudd #gato barbieri #john mclaughlin #paul motian #jimmy lyons

[fredseibertdotcom]

Michael Cuscuna, photograph by Jimmy Katz

Michael Cuscuna

Michael Cuscuna, one of my great inspirations and sometime collaborator, passed away this weekend (April 19, 2024) from cancer. Being a cancer survivor  last year myself, when someone I’ve known and worked with for over 50 years it hit particularly hard.

Blue Cuscuna: 1999 promotional sampler from Toshiba-EMI [Japan]

Michael has been the most consequential jazz record producer of the past half century, a man who had not only a passion, but the relentlessness necessary to will the entire history of the music into being. Don’t believe it? Check out the more than 2600 (!) of his credits on Discogs. Substantial and meaningful he might have been, but to me, he was a slightly older friend who was always there with a helping hand. Hopefully, I was able to hand something back on occasion. 

As I said when he answered “7 Questions” eight years ago: “I first encountered Michael as a college listener to his “freeform,” major station, radio show in New York, and was fanboy’d out when a mutual friend introduced us at [an] open rehearsal for [Carla Bley’s and Michael Mantler’s] Jazz Composer’s Orchestra at The Public Theater (MC has a photographic memory: “It was Roswell [Rudd]’s piece or Grachan [Moncur III]’s. You were darting nervously around the chairs with your uniform of the time – denim jean jacket, forgettable shirt and jeans.”) By 1972 or 73, he’d joined Atlantic Records as a producer, and since that was my career aspiration, I’d give him a call every once in awhile. He’d patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions, and I never forgot his kindness to a drifting, unfocused, fellow traveler. 

“...patiently always make time for my rambling and inane questions...” says a lot about Michael. His raspy voice could sometimes seem brusque, but ask anyone and they will tell you that he always made time to talk. Especially about jazz. 

I desperately wanted to be a record producer and Michael was one of the first professionals I encountered. He had already produced my favorite Bonnie Raitt LP when somehow or other I bullied my way into his Atlantic Records office, where he was a mentee of the legendary Joel Dorn. Over the next few years, Michael was often amused at some of the creative decisions I made, but he was always supportive and even would sometimes ask me to make a gig when he couldn’t. When I spent a year living in LA, he invited me over to the studio while he was mining the history of Blue Note Records that would define his life for the next half century. I completely failed to understand what the great service to American culture he was about to unleash. Along with Blue Note executive Charlie Lourie, Michael’s research resulted in a series of double albums (”two-fers” in 70s speak), but little did the world know what was on Michael’s and Charlie’s minds.

The Cuscuna/Lourie Blue Note “Two-Fers” that ignited Mosaic Records

“I don’t think it’s generally understood just how imperiled the musical and visual archives of Blue Note Records were at one point, and just how heroically Michael stepped in to make sure this unparalleled American music survived for future generations. If you like jazz, you owe the man.” –Evan Haga 

(Joe Maita does a great interview about Michael's career here.) 

Fast forward a few years. The air went out of my record producing tires, I became the first creative director of MTV, I quit MTV and along with my partner Alan Goodman started the world’s first media “branding” agency. Leafing through DownBeat one day I saw an ad that started a new relationship with Michael that would last, on one level or another, for the rest of his life: the “mail order” jazz reissue label Mosaic Records. 

Charlie Lourie & Michael Cuscuna at Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival, Japan 1987. Photograph by Gary Vercelli / CapRadio Music

Long story short, in 1982 Michael returned my check for the first two Mosaic  releases with a note asking for some help. Initially, Mosaic wasn’t the sure fire, instant success Michael and Charlie had hoped for, did I have any ideas? I did, but no time to do anything other than make suggestions, we were busy trying to get our own shop off the ground. This cycle repeated itself for another couple of years when this time when Michael called he said Mosaic was on death’s door. Fred/Alan was in better shape, so Alan and I, on our summer vacation, came up with the first Mosaic “brochure,” convinced the guys we knew what we were doing (I’d read a few paragraphs in a direct mail book in a bookstore) and, with nothing to lose, Charlie and Michael took the plunge with us. Success! 42 years later, the former Fred/Alan and Frederator CFO at the helm, Alan and I always answer any call from Mosaic.

The first Mosaic Record box set 1983

There aren’t many people in the world like Michael Cuscuna. The world’s culture will miss him. I will miss him. Most of all, of course, his wife and children will miss him. 

#Michael Cuscuna #Mosaic Records #Alan Goodman #Blue Note Records #RIP #Carla Bley #Michael Mantler #Jazz Composer's Orchestra #producing Records #producingrecords #jazz #mentors