![]() ![]() This is a great addition to the Bley library, bright and optimistic.” Sheppard offers robust tenor in the first three movements, switching to lightly floating soprano for the fourth and sharing lead instrumental duties with Swallow, who has shaped a personal, highly lyrical approach to the electric bass. The last part, ‘And Then One Day’, moves from tango into a more settled rhythm. “The middle parts, ‘On’ and ‚ And On‘, are written with wit and humour. “The whole suite has a more optimistic feel than the melancholic, wistful Andando El Tiempo,” suggested Jazz Views writer Jack Kenny, reviewing the group in London. The album’s title piece was written as Carla Bley was recuperating from illness, alluded to in characteristically droll liner notes – in verse this time. The stoical sound of the 12-bar blues – resolute and ready for anything – opens Life Goes On. ![]() It’ll always be the same once it’s recorded.” If this seems unlikely, given the improvisational capacity of the participants, the recording does have a definitive air about it. “The reason we’re touring is to be able to practice it every night and get it right, because it’s finally going to get put down. “This is music we’ve been preparing for the last three years,” Carla Bley told DownBeat, when the trio played the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, as part of ECM’s 50th anniversary celebrations. The new compositions featured here, all penned by Bley, take the form of three suites, each of which was widely previewed and fine-tuned by the group at concert and festival appearances in the US and Europe prior to the May 2019 recording session at Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI in Lugano. This format also demands that, as players, we improvise in the character of each particular song, which is both a challenge and, on a good night, a great satisfaction. Music stripped down to its basic elements. We’re essentially a chamber music ensemble, and this allows me to write music for us free of bombast and exaggeration. I especially relish the conversational flow the trio format allows. “I hear our voices in my mind’s ear as I compose for us. “We’ve learned to breathe together when we play,” Carla told the Charleston City Paper recently. This trio has a unique collective sound, reflecting – as The Telegraph recently noted – “musical mastery of a rare order”. Throughout Life Goes On, Carla’s terse, distinctive piano, shaping phrases irreducible as Monk or Satie, is beautifully framed by Swallow’s eloquent, elegant bass guitar and Sheppard’s yearning saxes. (Their first recording in trio format was Songs with Legs, recorded for the ECM-distributed WATT label in 1994.) Bley has composed for ensembles of every size but, over time, the trio has established itself as an ideal unit for expressing the essence of her work. ![]() The third volume of a sequence of albums begun with Trios in 2013 and continued with Andando El Tiempo (2016), Life Goes On – once more recorded in Lugano and produced by Manfred Eicher – features striking new music from American pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with saxophonist Andy Sheppard and bassist Swallow has a long history. Life Goes On ( ECM) Carla Bley / Andy Sheppard / Steve Swallow Released FebruDownBeat Five-Star Review Jazzwise Top 10 Releases of 2020 Jazziz Best Albums of 2020 The Guardian 10 Best Jazz Albums of 2020 2020 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Top 10 Best New Album YouTube:
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