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Author Beal, Amy C

Title Carla Bley / Amy C. Beal
Published Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2011]
©2011

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Description 1 online resource
Series American composers
American composers
Contents Introduction : "Like a mockingbird" -- Walking woman : Oakland, New York, Los Angeles, New York -- Sing me softly of the blues : Early short pieces and Songs without words -- Social studies : the Jazz Composers Guild and the Jazz Composers Orchestra -- "Mad at jazz" : A genuine Tong funeral -- Escalator over the hill : jazz opera as fusion -- Copyright royalties : New Music Distribution Service -- Big band theory : the Carla Bley Band and other projects -- The lone arranger : history and hilarity -- End of Vienna : fancy chamber music -- Dreams so real : "Jazz is really where my heart now lies."
Summary This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. With fastidious attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, Amy C. Beal tenders a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music._x000B__x000B_Bley is best known for her jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill," her 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. She has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz creating works that range from the highly accessible and tradition-based to commercially unviable and avant-garde. Beal details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism._x000B__x000B_Beal also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. Showing her to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz, Beal's straightforward discussion of Bley's life and career will stimulate deeper examinations of her work
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 101-104) and index
Notes English
Description based on print version record
Subject Bley, Carla
Bley, Carla
Composers -- United States -- Biography
Jazz musicians -- United States -- Biography
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Composers & Musicians.
MUSIC -- Genres & Styles -- Jazz.
Composers
Jazz musicians
United States
Genre/Form Electronic book
Biographies
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2019717406
ISBN 9780252093395
0252093399
1283582929
9781283582926
9786613895370
6613895377