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d i s s i d e n t
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a r t i s t : Paul Bley
t i t l e : Open, To Love
d a t e : 2000 / 1972
l a b e l : ECM
g e n r e : Jazz
r l s. d a t e : Dec 2003
t r a c k s : 07
b i t r a t e : 192kbps
s i z e : 58,9MB
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Despite the fact that pianist and composer Paul Bley had been a
renowned and innovative jazzman for nearly 20 years, 1973 saw the
release of his most mature and visionary work, and one that to this
day remains his opus. This is one of the most influential solo piano
recordings in jazz history, and certainly one that defined the sound
of the German label ECM. Consisting of seven tracks, five of which
were composed by Carla Bley (his ex-wife) and Annette Peacock (soon
to be his ex-wife), and two originals, Bley showcased his newfound
penchant for the spatial pointillism and use of silence that came
to define his mature work. In Carla Bley's "Ida Lupino," the pianist
took the song's harmonics and unwound them from their source,
deepening the blues elements, brushing the Errol Garnerish ostinato
with pastoral shades and textures of timbral elegance, and reaching
the tonic chords in the middle register just as he forced the
improvisation just barely into the abstract with his right hand,
percussively slipping in one or two extra notes to highlight the
deep lyricism in the tune's body. On his own "Started," Bley
illustrates brazenly the deep influences of the Second Viennese
School on his sense of harmony and counterpoint. Recalling Arnold
Sch÷enberg's solo piano pieces in their engagement of dissonance
and glissando placement, it's still Bley playing jazz and
improvising, vamping on his own theme while turning melody and
timbre back on themselves for the purpose of complete tonal
engagement in the middle register. And in Annette Peacock's
"Nothing Ever Was, Anyway," which closes the album, Bley makes
full use of an element he employs throughout the recording: space
and its ability to create the notion of consonance or dissonance
from the simplest of melodies. Here notes appear, related, but just
barely, to one another in a more or less linear sequence, and Bley
stretches that connection to the breaking point by using his sense
of spatial relationship in harmony to silence. He elongates the
tonal sustain and allows it to bleed into his next line just enough,
as if it were a ghostlike trace of another melody, a another distant
lyric, attempting to impose itself on the present one, though it had
just since ceased to exist. Ultimately, what Bley offers is jazz
pianism as a new kind of aural poetics, one that treats the
extension of the composer's line much as the poet treats the line
as the extension of breath. Sheer brilliance. ù AMG Review
Paul Bley - Piano, Keyboards, Soloist
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01-Closer [05:54]
02-Ida Lupino [07:34]
03-Started [05:20]
04-Open, To Love [07:13]
05-Harlem [03:26]
06-Seven [07:24]
07-Nothing Ever Was, Anyway [06:01]
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42:52 min
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