Influential Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley dies aged 83

So is the case with Paul Bley, the ‘other’ pianist from Montreal in every sense of the term. Indeed his style and career trajectory were vastly different to those of his feted compatriot Oscar Peterson, though their destinies became significantly linked when a 17 year-old Bley inherited the former’s gig at the Alberta Lounge in the Canadian capital, also birthplace to both men.

That was in 1949, by which time Bley had been leading his own quartet for five years, and the child prodigy status acquired by way of a Junior Music Diploma at the age of 11 would serve Bley well in the years to come, as he, like Peterson, relocated to the creative epicentre that was New York. Bley studied at the prestigious Juilliard School Of Music.

From the early 1950s onwards he would work with some of the prime movers in American jazz, from Coleman Hawkins and Charles Mingus to Sonny Rollins and Albert Ayler, though his collaboration with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry is also one of the key entries in a starry C.V. Such was his desire to record his own interpretations of the music of both his first wife Carla and Ornette, highlights being the former’s ‘Ida Lupino’ and the latter’s ‘Ramblin’, it is tempting to conclude that Bley’s strength was primarily as an improviser, and indeed prescient champion of unorthodox if not avant-garde talent.

Yet the body of work he assembled for labels like ECM, Leo and Justintime highlights a composer with an innate gift for crafting elegiac, often spine-tingling ambiences as well as incendiary arrangements. That said, an essential part of Bley’s legacy is his daringly progressive work with synthesizers and electronics, the peak of which is 1970’s Dual Unity, an astounding album made with pianist-vocalist Annette Peacock, another emerging talent he encouraged. Bley’s influence indeed spreads far and wide.

– Kevin Le Gendre