Carla Bley, a revered pianist, composer, bandleader, and pioneer of free jazz, has passed away at 87.
On Tuesday, Bley’s longtime partner and musical collaborator Steve Swallow announced that the jazz musician died due to complications with brain cancer.
Carla Bley was diagnosed with brain cancer back in 2018. “Sometimes I don’t know the answer to a question, so I think they must have taken something out by mistake, because ever since the operation I no longer have perfect pitch,” she said at the time, per The Guardian.
Carla Bley Bio
Carla Bley born Lovella May Borg was an American jazz composer, pianist, organist, and bandleader.
An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she was perhaps best known for her jazz opera Escalator over the Hill (released as a triple LP set)….
as well as a book of compositions that have been performed by many other artists, including Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, Art Farmer, John Scofield, and her ex-husband Paul Bley.
Bley was born in Oakland, California in 1936, to Emil Borg, a piano teacher and church choirmaster, who encouraged her to sing and to learn to play the piano, and Arline Anderson, who died when Bley was eight years old.
After giving up the church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland.
It was during her time in New York that she met her first husband, fellow pianist Paul Bley, who encouraged her to begin composing.
Her first recorded piece, “Bent Eagle,” came courtesy of George Russell in 1960 for his Riverside album Stratusphunk.
Over the next decade-plus, artists including Jimmy Giuffre, Don Ellis, Art Farmer, Steve Kuhn, Gary Burton and Tony Williams would all record her work.
Her pieces could be ethereally beautiful or subversively brash, but always found a grandeur without tilting into pretension, a quality reflected in her economical piano playing.
Her own recording career began in 1966 with an album for Fontana, featuring Mantler and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy.
Next came the mammoth three-LP set Escalator Over the Hill, co-credited to Bley and poet Paul Haines, and released by the JCO house label.
Recorded between 1968 and 1971, the album featured more than 40 contributors, among them bassists Charlie Haden and Jack Bruce, saxophonist Gato Barbieri, guitarist John McLaughlin, trumpeter Don Cherry, keyboardist Don Preston and vocalist Sheila Jordan.
Carla Bley and Mantler founded their own record company, WATT, in 1972, and it became her main outlet from 1974’s Tropic Appetites through 2009’s Carla’s Christmas Carols, the latter made with the Partyka Brass Quintet.
Throughout the years, she kept evolving — recording three albums for ECM in a trio with Swallow and British saxophonist Andy Sheppard, and leading a horn-heavy ensemble in the 1980s and ’90s, one of her most enduring projects.
Carla Bley Death Cause
Her death was announced by longtime partner and musical collaborator Steve Swallow, who said the cause was complications from brain cancer.
Carla Bley was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, explaining: “Sometimes I don’t know the answer to a question, so I think they must have taken something out by mistake, because ever since the operation I no longer have perfect pitch.”
In addition to Swallow, Bley is survived by her daughter with Mantler, the pianist and vocalist Karen Mantler.
Carla Bley Net Worth
Carla Bley was a successful and prolific jazz pianist and composer who had an estimated net worth of about $20 million at the time of her death.
She made her fortune by creating and performing original music for over six decades, collaborating with many famous musicians, and founding several record labels and distribution services.
She was a pioneer of free jazz and jazz-rock fusion, and influenced many generations of artists.
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