CARLA BLEY ‘TRIOS’

Highlights from the celebrated oeuvre of pianist/composer Carla Bley, concisely performed by herself, saxophonist Andy Sheppard and bassist Steve Swallow. ‘Intimate and inviting’ (Something Else).

Since she was young, pianist Carla Bley has remained a fixture in American jazz because of her eccentric compositional talent. In the late 1960s she made her breakthrough with the album Escalator over the Hill and she started composing for the big bands of Gary Burton, Charlie Haden and Michael Mantler. She founded her own bands and won important awards, including Best Composer in the Downbeat Polls. For more than twenty years she has been collaborating with British sax player Andy Sheppard and her partner, bassist Steve Swallow. For the ECM label they’ve recorded the album Trios, with highlights from Carla’s oeuvre.

‘Sheppard, one of the great unsung tenor saxophonists in jazz, has played with Bley since 1987 and is now at home in all her idiosyncratic, cunning modes: her paper-dry wit, perverse logic, aslant lyricism and noir atmospheres. No one gets a sound from the electric bass like Swallow—plangent and human, dark cries from the heart. The effect of the reductive format is to etch Bley’s melodies in the air like bare branches against a winter sky’ (Jazz Times).

The Bimhuis restaurant is open prior to the concert from 6.30 til 8.30PM (reservations via 020-7882158). After the concert, the Bimhuis Café is open (free entrance).

Listen to this concert via LIVE STREAM BIMHUIS RADIO. Click the Bimhuis Radio link below on the evening of the concert: