Carla Bley was born in Oakland, California in 1938. Her parents were both musicians who had met at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Thus, her early years were saturated with both music and religion. She played piano at church, beginning at age 4, sang in the choir and played organ at weddings and funerals as soon as she was tall enough.

At the age of 12 she became interested in roller skating and spent the next three years practicing to become a competitive skater. At the same time, she had an after-scxool job accompanying a dance clqss. At 15 she quit school and went to work as a clerk in a music store. Then she accompained a folk singer for a few years and began playing solo piano in bars.

She became interested in jazz, and went to New York when she was 19. She supported herself by working as a cigarette girl at Birdland and Basin Street. She met pianist Paul Bley and began traveling around the country with him. He encouraged her to write music for his band. Though she worked occasionally as a pianist in coffee houses and bars, her main interest became composition. She married Paul Bley in California, and they lived in Los Angeles for a couple of years before returning to New York.

After working as an usherette at movie theaters for about a year she got a job as a coat check girl at the Jazz Gallery and once again had the opportunity to hear all the best players in New York. She kept writing, and eventually a lot of musicians, notably Paul Bley, George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre and Art Farmer, began recording her pieces. She also had an ongoing gig at a coffee house in the village, where many musicians came to sit in, and briefly played in a band led by Charles Moffett featuring Pharoah Sanders.

She met Michael Mantler in 1964 when they were both active in the Jazz Composers’ Guild. Together they started an orchestra made up of the Guild’s members, including Roswell Rudd, Archie Shepp and Milford Graves. When the Guild broke up they continued playing in public, but changed the name to the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra. They also toured Europe with a small group called Jazz Realities, featuring Steve Lacy, and recorded an album for small Dutch company, to which they also managed to sell a tape of a live orchestra concert.

During this period she also did many special project:
Nick Mason, the drummer with Pink Floyd, recorded an album of her songs entitled Fictitious Sports which featured Robert Wyatt and Chris Spedding.

She wrote music for a large group of Scandinavian musicians and appeared with them at the International Music Festival in Norway.
She did an arrangement of the music to Fellini’s 8 ½ for a Nino Rota memorial album.
She arranged and wrote material for Charlie Haden’s second Liberation Music Orchestra album called Ballad of the Fallen.

During 1983 she wrote a piece for the Creative Improvisers’ Orchestra which included Leo Smith and Ray Anderson, wrote music to the lyrics of the American poet Ismael Reed, which was recorded by Taj Mahal, wrote another piece to a poem by Malcom Lowrey, which was presented in Cologne by West Germany TV featuring Jack Bruce and Steve Swallow, recorded an album called Heavy Heart with Hiram Bullock, Kenny Kirkland and members of her regular band, and did an arrangement of the Thelonious Monk piece Misterioso, featuring Johnny Griffin, for another memorial album produced by Hal Wilner. During this period she also toured extensively and wrote three pieces for the Composers and Improvisers Orchestra in Seattle (10 Horns).

In 1985 she began to focus on smaller ensembles and started writing for and touring with a sextet (no horns). She still did occasional projects with larger bands. For Willner’s Kurt Weill album she wrote an arrangement of Lost in the Stars featuring Phil Woods. Then she wrote an album featuring her bass player, Steve Swallow, called Night-glo. Using her existing 10-horn material as a starting point, she added enough new material to do a European tour with a 15-piece band. An hour-long NDR TV feature, called La Paloma, was created around her and that band in Hamburg. A mini-operatic version of For Under the Volcano, the Malcom Lowry piece she had premiered at Cologne, was staged at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles as part of the New Music America Festival, with Jack Bruce, Steve Swallow and Don Preston.

The Carla Bley Sextet, with Hiram Bullock, Steve Swallow, Larry Willis, Victor Lewis and Don Alias, toured in 1986, made a record called Sextet, and played on a French TV extravaganza. Steve Swallow wrote an album featuring her as an organ soloist, called Carla, and she also co-produced, with Swallow, several other albums for the XtraWatt label, an extension of Watt. The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society commissioned her to write Coppertone, featuring Fred Sherry, Paula Robinson and Ani Kavafian. She once again felt compelled to reduce the amount of musicians in her band. She began playing duets with Steve Swallow, first as recreational/educational pleasure at home and then, somewhat reluctantly, in public.

She received a grant to write a serier of piano pieces for Ursula Oppens. They were called Romantic Notions, and were premiered in New York in 1988. The Houston Symphony commissioned a short fanfare, called Continuoso. She continued touring with Steve Swallow and they recorded an album on Watt called Duets. Then she decided to return to working with her 10-horn band. The Big Carla Bley Band, featuring Lew Soloff, Gary Valente, Wolfie Pusching, Franck Lacy, Cristof Lauer, Bob Stewart, Andy Sheppard and her American rhythm section, toured Europe and made a live recording entitled Fleur Carnivore. She did a radio production in Sweden with the same instrumentation. She was asked to do something with the Harvard Big Band, but, since she had no music for (or interest in) that instrumentation, she asked Jeff Friedman to enlarge some of her smaller band pieces. The concert at Harvard was followed by a few other Big Band situations, notably the Creative Opportunity Orchestra in Austin, Texas, where she again used the Friedman orchestrations.

Finally, having been commissioned to write a piece for the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, she broke down and began writing her own Big Band orchestrations. This first piece, eventually named All Fall Down, was premiered in Berlin in the spring of 1989. It turned out to be the beginning of a series of pieces for this long avoided instrumentation.

Meanwhile: The Friedman enlargements, supervised by Carla and Steve Swallow, were recorded in Palermo by the Orchestra Jazz Siciliana and released on the XtraWatt label.
Again with Swallow, she co-produced Karen Mantler’s second recording, entitled Get The Flu.
She composed the title track, Dreamkeeper, and arranged the rest of the music for Charlie Haden’s third Liberation Music album.
She played Duets with Steve Swallow in Japan. There was also an appearance with Liberation Music Orchestra during that Japanese trip.
Carla and Steve played on the NBC TV Night Music series, produced by Hal Willner and hosted by Dave Sanborn.

When they returned home, the orchestra became their sole interest and, with the help of Timothy Marquand, they formed the Jazz Composers’ Orchestra Association. They made a record of Mantler’s music and then commissioned and recorded new works by other composers. During this time she left Paul Bley and married Michael Mantler. They had a child named Karen in 1966.

When JCOA ran out of resources, Mantler and Bley unsuccessfully tried to get the big record label interested in their activities. They soon realized that they would have to fend for themselves. Then Bley had a lucky break. Steve Swallow told Gary Burton, who was always looking for interesting music to play, that Bley had written an hour’s worth of music but couldn’t sell it to anyone. Burton expressed interest, and with some additional writing for the Gary Burton Quartet, A Genuine Tong Funeral, featuring Larry Coryell and Gato Barbieri, was released on RCA. Soon after, she was commissioned by Charlie Haden, an old friend from the California days, to arrange and contribute pieces to his album, Liberation Music Orchestra, which featured, among others, Don Cherry and Dewey Redman. Between other People’s projects she was also working on an opera, Escalador Over the Hill, a collaboration with the poet Paul Haines, which was finally completed in 1972 and released on JCOA’s own label as a 3-record set. Among the large cast of singers and players were Jack Bruce, Linda Ronstadt, John McLaughlin, Viva, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Gato Barbieri, Jeanne Lee, Howard Johnson, Karen Mantler and Charlie Haden. It was never performed live.

In 1973 Mantler and Bley formed Watt Works and began to make their own records, starting with Bley’s Tropic Appetites, another collaboration with Paul Haines. They also began distributing other independently produced records through the New Music Distribution Service, a division of JCOA. In 1974 she was commissioned by the Ensemble to write a chamber music piece. 3/4 featured Keith Jarrett and was conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. It was also performed by Ursula Oppens with Speculum Musicae, by Keith Jarrett with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and others. At this point they moved to the Catskill mountains and built a house with a recording studio in the basement. In 1975 Bley joined the Jack Bruce Band, featuring Mick Taylor, and for 6 months experienced a different kind of life and music. When the group broke up she decided to form her own band.

In 1976 she used Richard Tee and the Stuff rhythm section on an album called Dinner Music, which also featured Roswell Rudd and Carlos Ward. She started writing for a 10 piece band (6 horns) and began touring and recording with that instrumentation regularly. Among her band members were Gary Valente, Tony Dagradi, Michael Mantler, Bob Stewart, Steve Slagle, D. Sharpe and Steve Swallow.

Over the next six years the band appeared in Europe, Japan and the U.S., and made five albums for the Watt label: European Tour 1977, Musique Mecanique, Social Studies, Live and I Hate to Sing. She also produced several Michael Mantler albums. The band recorded a sound track album to the Claude Miller film Mortelle Randonnee, for which Bley had written the music.

In the fall of 1990 she was a visiting professor at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA. During the semester she took time off to do a European tour with an 18 piece band. An album was recorded, called The Very Big Carla Bley Band. The music featured four solists: Lew Soloff, Gary Valente, Wolfgang Pusching and Andy Sheppard. In December, Andy Sheppard invited Carla and Steve to play with him on a BBC television program that was part of a music series. It went so well that they decided to tour together in the future.

At the beginning of 1991 she and Michael Mantler separated. He went back to Europe to live and left the company entirely to her. Their daughter Karen became the general manager of the entire operation, which by this time, included two recordings labels, a recording studio, and three publishing companies.

Carla continued playing with Steve Swallow, with whom she was now living. As a duo they toured Europe again in the spring and summer of 1991 and got as far east (always trying to get to interesting countries) as Greece. They played the first trio concerts with Andy Sheppard in Europe in late summer. The next few months were spent working on Steve’s record for the XtraWatt label.

After a failed attempt at writing for string quartet, Carla decided to write a piece for Violin and Big Band. Luckly, a commission from the Glasgow Jazz Festival made it possible for her to devote most of the year to the project, which was to feature Romanian violinist Alex Balanescu.

Carla and Steve again played duets in Japan in March, 1992. Later in the year they went to Glasgow to rehearse the new violin piece with a Scottish big band, and returned in the summer, with key members of her band, to premiere the piece, entitled Birds of Paradise, for the Glasgow Festival. As the resident composer of the Festival, she also conducted the Strathclyde Youth Band in a program of her music. A half hour film documentary was made of the rehearsals of Birds of Paradise. Then, joined by the rest of the band (the same musicians, most of them from London, she had used for the Very Big Carla Bley Band tour), she spent the next week in residence at the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy.

At the end of the summer Carla and Steve recorded a second Duets album, called Go Together. Carla made a solo piano appearance in a film about Eric Satie. There was another Duets tour of Europe.

At the beginning of 1993 Karen Mantler moved back to New York City and Ilene Mark took over as general manager of Watt Works. With the exception of a Duets tour in March, Carla spent the rest of the winter writing still more music for big band (while vowing that this would be the last of it). Two of her new pieces were premiered at Espoo, Finland, with Martti Lappalainen’s Big Band, as part of the April Jazz Espoo Festival. Then in June, she finally got to hear the result of the two years she had spent writing for this difficult and time consuming orchestration. Her Very Big Band did a long tour of Europe and recorded the album, Big Band Theory, which included Birds of Paradise, in London during the middle portion of the tour.

During the remainder of the year Carla performed only with Steve Swallow. They went to Münich for one concert in September. They played at the San Fancisco Jazz Festival in October, and also in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz. In November and December there was a long Duets tour of Europe.

In 1994, with the exception of a short tour with the Very Big Band in March which ended with an appearance at the Banlieues Bleues Festival near Paris, and a trio tour with Steve Swallow and Andy Sheppard, which produced a live album, Carla spent almost the entire year writing. Tigers in Training, commissioned by the Hamburg-based chamber ensemble L’Art Pour L’Art, was finished in August. Then, breaking her recent vow never to write again for Big Band, she accepted a commission from the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band and worked on a piece for them called Coconuts. It was performed December 1st at Carnegie Hall.

In January 1995, her album Big Band Theory was nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Jazz Big Band Album. Songs With Legs, the trio album recorded on tour in England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria and Turkey, was released in February. Carla, Steve and Andy Sheppard toured Europe again in February and March.

Biography courtesy of Saudades Tourneen

CARLA BLEY - DISCOGRAPHY

As a leader:

Songs with Legs, WATT/26

Big Band Theory, WATT/25

Go Together, WATT/24

The Very Big Carla Bley Band, WATT/23

Fleur Carnivore, WATT/21

Duets, WATT/20

Sextet, WATT/17

Night-Glo, WATT/16

Heavy Heart, WATT/14

I Hate to Sing, WATT/12 - ½

Live, WATT/12

Mortelle Randonnee, Phonogram

Social Studies, WATT/11

Musique Mecanique, WATT/9

Eurpean Tour 1977, WATT/8

Dinner Music, WATT/6

3/4, WATT/3

Tropic Appetites, WATT/1

Escalator Over the Hill, JCOA

with others:

Steve Swallow, Swallow, XtraWATT/6

Charlie Haden, Dreamkeeper, Blue Note

Various, The Watt Works Family Album, WATT/22

Steve Swallow, Carla, XtraWATT/2

Various Artists, Lost in the Stars, The Music of Kurt Weill, A&M

Various Artists, That’s The Way I Feel Now, A tribute to Thelonious Monk, A&M

Golden Palominos, Drunk With Passion, Celluloid

Golden Palominos, Visions of Excess, Calluloid

Various Artists, Amarcord Nino Rota, Hannibal

Gary Burton, A Genuine Tong Funeral, RCA

Nick Mason, Fictitious Sports, CBS

Charlie Haden, Ballad of the Fallen, ECM

Charlie Haden, Liberation Music Orchestra, Impulse

Michael Mantler, Something There, WATT/13

Michael Mantler, More Movies, WATT/10

Michael Mantler, Movies, WATT/7

Michael Mantler, Silence, WATT/5

Michael Mantler, The Hapless Child, WATT/4

Michale Mantler, No Answer, WATT/2

Michael Mantler, The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, JCOA

Michael Mantler, Jazz Realities, Fontana

Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Communication, Fontana

AWARDS, HONORS & GRANTS

1972 - Guggenheim Fellowship (composition)

1973 - Oscar du Disque de Jazz (for Escalator Over the Hill)

(70’s) - Composition grant from National Endowment for the Arts

(70’s) - Composition grant from Creative Artists Program Service

1979 - New York Jazz Award (arranger)

1984 - Grammy Nomination (for arrangement of Misterioso)

1985 - Deutscher Shallplattenpreis

(80’s) - Downbeat Poll (best composer)

1990 - Jazz Times (composer)

1990 - Hi Fi Vision (Jazz Musician of the Year)

1990 - Downbeat (Record of the Year - Dreamkeeper - arranger)

1991 - Downbeat Poll-Critics (Best arranger)

1991 - Downbeat Poll-Readers (Best composer & arranger)

1991 - Prix Jazz Moderne (for The Very Big Carla Bley Band)

1992 - Downbeat Poll-Critics (Best arranger)

1992 - Downbeat Poll-Readers (Best composer & arranger)

1993 - Downbeat Poll-Critics (Best arranger)

1994 - Downbeat Poll-Critics (Best arranger)

1994 - Downbeat Poll-Readers (Best arranger)

Awards Carla didn’t get (for which she was nominated):

Grammy for best Album Package (Social Studies) 1981

Grammy for best Jazz Instrumental, Big Band (Misterioso) 1985

Jazzpar Prize 1993 (Danish Jazz Center)

Jazzpar Prize 1994 (Danish Jazz Center)

Jazzpar Prize 1995 (Danish Jazz Center)