1. Far North
2. Way Down South Suite
3. Flame
4. Longer
5. Pent-Up House
Paul Bley - Piano
Paul Bley, the Canadian veteran jazz pianist and composer, is now 81 years old. This recent release from ECM was recorded live, before an enthusiastic
audience in Oslo, in August 2008. He has always been a true original, a distinctive sound in the jazz world, someone identified at various times with free
jazz, the avant-garde and post-bop, who can yet play with extraordinary delicacy and lyricism if the situation requires it. He has been heard on well over
100 CDs by now.
Play Blue
finds him in fine fettle. The opening track, Far North, has a staccato lead in, building in urgency, then introducing a melody with a measure of
wistfulness. Bley characteristically strikes the keys with both focus and clarity. There are changes of mood and tempo, at times positively frolicking, at
others sounding highly experimental. There are meditative, quite beautiful passages which can revert to pounding dissonance: always, however, with an
underlying suggestion of the blues. In the Way Down South Suite, the first movement offers contrasting styles and unexpected departures. You could
say he goes walkabout through interesting vistas, always on the borderlands between different approaches. The second movement starts quietly and
reflectively. From there, Bley goes on to make the keyboard do everything but walk. Even the interior of the piano is brought into play. Clearly this
particular track went down well with the audience, as witnessed by their rapturous response.
Flame
is a lovely ballad with Bley combining a remarkably sensitive touch with stylish, even funky, improvisation. Great stuff. Longer is again a thing
of beauty, beginning more slowly than previous tracks but suddenly accelerating. Bley gives a measured performance, coaxing the discordant and the lyrical
from the same instrument. Pent-Up House, a Sonny Rollins composition, is the only piece on the album written by someone other than the pianist
himself. It is quicker in tempo, a brief presentation of the theme building to a vigorous interpretation by Bley, with some rousing moments. At the end,
there is prolonged applause from the audience, which this reviewer echoes.
Paul Bley has always merited attention from discerning jazz-lovers because of his distinctive and adventurous approach. This disc reveals that same
ambitious and questing spirit.
James Poore
CD Reviews
ECM 376 6190
