Skip to content →

Life Goes On/ Happy 85th birthday, Carla Bley

 

In the USA, it is currently “yesterday”,  Tuesday, 11 May, 2021.

I hope that Carla Bley is enjoying a very happy birthday with her beloved, Steve Swallow.

For rather more than my entire adult life, Carla Bley has composed, arranged and played singular music, variously – sometimes, simultaneously – provocative, surprising, very amusing, satirical, sublimely lyrical, complex, seemingly-simple…

Her three most recent releases – all, new trio recordings of new music, made between 2013 and 2019 – are some of her finest, ever.

Carla Bley was in her 83rd year when she recorded Life Goes On.

It begins with the unassumingly uncanny titlepiece. Carla is pianist/composer, Steve Swallow plays bass, Andy Sheppard tenor sax.

 

 

Click here to read an excellent, 2018 vintage interview-based piece written by another longtime admirer.

You may like to see an earlier  Pelican Yoga post, illustrated by photos I took when the very same trio visited Australia  in 2017.

 

Footnote:

I took this post’s featured, unposed image on 19 June 2019, whilst enjoying a sunny winter’s day walk around Perth’s Lake Monger.

 

Published in 'western' musics instrumental music music photographs Western Australia