Paul Bley: Play Blue (ECM/Ode)

 |   |  <1 min read

Paul Bley: Flame
Paul Bley: Play Blue (ECM/Ode)

It seems absurd to say it -- but others have -- that this solo concert in Oslo by pianist Paul Bley is a career highlight.

Absurd, because at the time of this recording in 2008 he was 75.

But this astonishing tour-de-force finds him freely improvising in a way that is filled with daring runs, endlessly melodic extrapolations from the smallest of ideas and a muscularity leavened by an intuitive sense of spacial architecture that is quite thrilling.

Halfway through the 17 minute opening piece Far North he gently takes the mood down from wrestling out rippling runs into the most spare pointillism before letting cascades of notes flow through him and hiking the piece up another notch.

At one moment he can be as sensitive as Bill Evans, at another like the young and adventurous Keith Jarrett and another Cecil Taylor at his most pugilistic . . . but he always sounds like himself, a man for whom the keyboard is wide open with possibilities. 

The final piece is a jaunty and playful take on Sonny Rollins' Pent-Up House . . . but to get to that jigsaw puzzle of notes and crashing chords you have been taken on a journey where Bley never once falls back on a cliche, looks for a soft option or tries to find an easy way out.

This is improvised and restlessly inventive piano playing on the highest plane.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Jazz at Elsewhere articles index

Tim Hopkins: Seven (Rattle Jazz)

Tim Hopkins: Seven (Rattle Jazz)

As with the Rattle album Ancient Astronaut Theory by Dave Lisik (interviewed here) and Richard Nunns, I was invited to write the liner notes for this release on Rattle's jazz imprint. I was... > Read more

MAYNARD FERGUSON INTERVIEWED (2002): And the band played on

MAYNARD FERGUSON INTERVIEWED (2002): And the band played on

They don't make them like Maynard Ferguson any more. At 73 he's still out there on the road almost nine months a year playing his brand of gutsy, big-band jazz to audiences in small and large... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

THE BARGAIN BUY: Lou Reed, The Solo Years

THE BARGAIN BUY: Lou Reed, The Solo Years

How strange to live in a world without Lou Reed. Not that we chatted often -- indeed never -- but it was always good to know that Lou was out there somewhere being irritable about something. In... > Read more

The Ramones: Hey! Ho! Let's Go: Ramones Anthology (1999)

The Ramones: Hey! Ho! Let's Go: Ramones Anthology (1999)

Like many of my generation, I can remember exactly where I was when JFK, RFK and John Lennon were shot. And when Kurt Cobain proved, contrary to what he sang, he did have a gun. But with as... > Read more