Customer Reviews

Solo in Mondsee (Ocrd)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Paul Bley's album is excellent. For "ECM Jazz" fans, this CD is a must.