Solo in Mondsee (Ocrd)

Paul Bley | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 21, 2007)
• Original Release Date: 2007
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Ecm Records
• ASIN: B000Q6ZMUG
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,724 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Solo in Mondsee is the first solo piano album from Paul Bley on ECM in 35 years! It is the belated `sequel' to 1972's innovative and enduring Open, To Love and is being released in Bley's 75th year. On this creative and profound improvised recital, Bley develops a fascinating program. Kaleidoscopicallysplintered melodies, distant memories of standards, abstractions of the blues and spontaneous free playing are some of the subjects of the "Mondsee Variations." Simply put, Paul Bley (b 1932) is one of the most influential pianists in the entire history of jazz. While still in his twenties he played with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Chet Baker, Charles Mingus and Art Blakey. He also introduced the talents of Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins to the jazz world with his late 1950s quintet. Among the first artists to appear on ECM, Bley's work was also a major influence on the development of ECM's "aesthetic," as well as almost all of the pianists on the label - from Keith Jarrett to Christian Wallumrød, from Marilyn Crispell to Jon Balke. He has performed with numerous ECM artists, most notably Gary Peacock and Paul Motian. This all-star trio will be performing at New York's famed Birdland in late August, with a new studio album to be recorded as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Bley, November 26, 2007

By 

Oldnslow (Seattle, Washington USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Solo in Mondsee (Ocrd) (Audio CD)

This 2001 solo outing by Paul Bley is excellent. I have been listening off and on to Bley for over forty years, and this ranks up high, at least in terms of his solo work. He has a unique style, which requires perhaps a little more attentive listening than some others, but is very rewarding. Contemplative, but involving, and slightly off kilter. I highly recommend this well recorded session. Bley is one of the most original, cliche free pianists we have and he's still at the top of his game.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars STUNNING ORIGINALS BY A .... STUNNING ORIGINAL, August 2, 2009

By 

David Keymer "David Keymer" (Modesto CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Solo in Mondsee (Ocrd) (Audio CD)

Ten originals by one of the most original --and melodic- jazz pianists. Bley has played in ultra-modernist groups led by Ornette Coleman and Jimmy Giuffre, and has produced a string of consistently good albums. A consummate group player and accompanist, he plays best of all on his own, and playing either his own compositions or those of composers with whom he has long ties, like Carla Bley, Annette Peacock and Ornette. This fine album --ten originals, played solo-- has sat in the hopper for six years but it is a fitting triumph for the now-75-year-old Bley. Eminently listenable.

A comment: Some of these pieces hint back at the late romantics but most remind me more of the piano music of early French modernists like Satie or Poulenc, only more muscular and somehow, they are alway identifiable as jazz. Variation #8 could very well come from the idiosyncratic English modernist composer Khaikhoshru Sorabji's 100 Transcendental Studies, which is high praise indeed.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A master tells the musical story of his life, March 8, 2010

By 

D. Bartholome "dajbala" (Highlands, TX USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Solo in Mondsee (Ocrd) (Audio CD)

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that I believe this is the best music Paul Bley has recorded. This is a summation of the man's musical life; it's all here. You can hear Bird, and standards, and the blues, and free jazz, and Romanticism/Impressionism, all assimilated and digested, all brought together into a whole that somehow manages to be both chaotic and coherent. What a gift; why in the world did it take five years for ECM to issue this music--not that it matters, really.