“A Lifetime of Carla Bley”

In a recent profile of jazz giant Carla Bley for the New Yorker, Ethan Iverson gets at an essential quality of the long career of the 82-year-old composer and pianist right there in the first sentence: “Her relentless productivity and constant reinvention can make it difficult to grasp her contribution to music.” Then, with her help at her home in upstate New York, he guides the reader through her history, from her days listening to Count Basie at Birdland and her landmark Escalator Over the Hill to her recent trio records. We can’t stop chuckling at her cutting assessment of free jazz (followed by her adoration of Albert Ayler): “I think the music needed a setting. Just as it was, I thought free jazz needed work.” Read Iverson’s profile, and see Carla at Big Ears 2019.