Carla Bley (American Composers)

This stands as the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and profound influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. With meticulous attention to Bley's diverse compositions spanning fifty years and critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, Amy C. Beal delivers a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music.

Best known for her jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill," her significant role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Bley has deftly navigated the jazz landscape. Her work ranges from highly accessible, tradition-based contexts to commercially unviable, avant-garde pieces.

Beal thoroughly details the staggering variety within Bley's output, as well as her distinctive use of parody, quotations, and contradictions. The book examines the unique musical vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career, highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism.

Furthermore, Beal illuminates Bley's pioneering professional and managerial work, noting her role in the development of artist-owned record labels, her co-founding and management of WATT Records, and her co-founding of New Music Distribution Service. By showcasing her not just as an artist but as an activist who has steadfastly maintained musical independence and professional control amidst the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz, Beal's straightforward discussion of Bley's life and career is set to stimulate deeper examinations of her truly singular body of work.