Bley, Paul, 1932-2016 : Born in Montreal in 1932, Paul Bley is one of the few Canadian jazz musicians of his generation to have achieved international recognition as a concert and recording artist. As a child in Montreal, Bley studied first violin and then piano, and by the mid to late 1940s he was the leader and pianist in jazz groups in and around Montreal. In 1949, he replaced Oscar Peterson at the Alberta Lounge. In 1950 Bley enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music, New York City (NYC), and became active in that city's jazz scene. His debut LP recording, Introducing Paul Bley, was released in 1953. Although based in NYC, Bley remained active in the Montreal scene. In 1952 he co-founded the Jazz Workshop in Montreal, an organization which presented concerts featuring soloists from NYC accompanied by local musicians. The Jazz Workshop organized a February 1953 visit to Montreal by Charlie Parker, who performed live on CBFT television (with Bley on piano) and at the Chez Paree nightclub.
During the mid 1950s, Bley toured with his own trio and also appeared in groups led by Lester Young, Chet Baker, Jackie McLean, and others. In 1957 Bley re-located to Los Angeles, where his bookings included a lengthy engagement at the Hillcrest Club. During October 1958 he led a quintet at the Hillcrest that included Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), Billy Higgins (drums), and Charlie Haden (double bass). Like many jazz artists in the 1950s, Bley had largely played in the predominant bop idiom, and it was during his engagements in Los Angeles (including the quintet with Coleman and Cherry, and free duets with the trumpeter Herbie Spanier) that he began to play what has since become known as free jazz. Bley married his first wife, the composer Karen Borg (now known as Carla Bley) in 1957.
Returning to NYC in 1959, Bley performed and recorded in groups led by, among others, Charles Mingus, George Russell, and Don Ellis. During 1961-1962, he was part of a trio with Jimmy Giuffre (reeds) and Steve Swallow (double bass), and with Swallow in other trios. During 1963-1964 he played in Sonny Rollins' quartet, touring Japan in 1963. In 1964, Paul Bley and Carla Bley were founding members of the Jazz Composers Guild (JCG), an artist-controlled organization that presented its members in a series of concerts of avant-garde and free jazz in NYC; it was during this period that Bley and others in the JCG began to explore playing jazz in free time. Bley led an influential trio during the 1960s, working first in the USA and, increasingly after 1965, in Europe. Bley's relationship with his second spouse, the composer and vocalist Annette Peacock, began in the mid 1960s; they married after his 1967 divorce from Carla Bley.
Bley's career underwent a major shift in 1969, when he started to use electric instruments in live performance and in recording sessions. In addition to the electric piano, Bley performed on the Moog and ARP synthesizers, and was one of the first major artists to explore these new instruments. Sometimes performing with Annette Peacock, his ensembles during the period 1969-1972 were often billed as the Paul Bley (or Bley-Peacock) Synthesizer Show. After his separation from Peacock, he led the electric jazz fusion group Paul Bley and Scorpio. Despite his focus on electric instruments during this period, in 1972 Bley recorded the first of many influential solo piano albums, Open, To Love, and since 1974 he has seldom performed on electric instruments.
In 1974 Bley and his spouse, the video artist Carol Goss (whom he met in 1973, and married in 1980), established the company Improvising Artists Inc. (IAI). IAI was most active in the 1970s, when it developed a catalogue of issued recordings by Bley and other jazz artists; IAI also organized and promoted a roster of jazz artists for live performance. In addition to sound recordings, Goss, Bley, and IAI produced commercial music videos (both performance documentaries and more abstract interpretations). In the early 1980s, the Goss-Bleys and IAI relocated from NYC to Cherry Valley, NY.
Since 1974, Bley has toured and recorded, often in Europe, as a solo artist or with changing combinations of players (usually in duo or trio, seldom larger than a quartet), and almost always as a leader or co-leader. While the groupings have been fluid, Bley has maintained many longstanding collaborations and has re-invented some earlier ensembles (notably the trio of Bley-Gary Peacock-Barry Altschul, which reunited for a major tour of Japan in 1976, and that of Bley-Giuffre-Swallow, which reformed during 1989-1995). In addition to performing his own compositions and jazz standards, Bley has been an important interpreter and exponent of the compositions of Ornette Coleman, Carla Bley, and Annette Peacock, and has also improvised new compositions in concert and studio settings. While his visits to Canada were infrequent in the 1960s and 1970s, Bley's connections with the Canadian jazz scene have grown since the 1980s. Bley has recorded with several Canadian musicians, including Jane Bunnett, Sonny Greenwich, Yannick Rieu, Herbie Spanier, and Kenny Wheeler, for Justin Time and other Canadian record labels. He has also performed at Canadian jazz and new music festivals, including the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal, which honoured him with a concert series in 1992 and which accorded him the Prix Oscar Peterson in 1994. In the early 1990s Bley added teaching to his career, when he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. With David Lee, he has co-written an autobiography, Stopping Time: Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz (1999), and his numerous recordings have been listed in a discography by Henk Kluck, Bley Play: The Paul Bley Recordings (1996).
