Andando el Tiempo

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard, Steve Swallow

EN / DE
Andando el Tiempo features new music of wide emotional compass by Carla Bley, and underlines her originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer.  “Saints Alive!” sets up animated conversations between the three musical participants with striking statements from Steve Swallow’s bass guitar and Andy Sheppard’s soprano sax.  The stately “Naked Bridges/Diving Brides” draws inspiration from Mendelssohn and the poetry of Paul Haines.  And the powerful three part title composition – which addresses the trials and tribulations of recovery from addiction – moves through sorrow to hopefulness and joy.  The trio with Sheppard and Swallow has been an ideal vehicle for Carla’s writing for more than 20 years and also provides one of the best contexts for her unique piano playing.  Like the critically lauded ECM album Trios (2012), Andando el Tiempo was recorded at Lugano’s RSI Studio and produced by Manfred Eicher.
Andando el Tiempo präsentiert neue Musik von großer emotionaler Bandbreite aus der Feder Carla Bleys, die hier einmal mehr ihre Originalität und ihren Einfallsreichtum als Jazzkomponistin unterstreicht. „Saints Alive!“ besteht aus lebhaften Konversationen aller Beteiligten mit bemerkenswerten Beiträgen von Steve Swallows E-Bass und Andy Sheppards Sopransaxofon. Das würdevolle „Naked Bridges/Diving Brides” bezieht seine Inspiration aus der Musik Mendelssohns und der Lyrik Paul Haines. Das kraftvolle, dreiteilige Titelstück, das die Irrungen und Wirrungen im Genesungsprozess von einer Suchterkrankung thematisiert, führt durch Kummer hin zu hoffnungsvollen Gefühlen und Lebensfreude. Das Trio mit Sheppard und Swallow fungiert seit mehr als 20 Jahren als ideales Medium für Carlas Kompositionen und stellte zugleich auch immer einen der besten Kontexte für ihr unverwechselbares Klavierspiel dar. Genauso wie das von der Kritik viel gelobte ECM Album Trios (2012) wurde auch Andando el Tiempo in Luganos RSI Studio aufgenommen und von Manfred Eicher produziert.
Featured Artists Recorded

November 2015, Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano

Original Release Date

06.05.2016

  • Andando el Tiempo
    (Carla Bley)
  • 1Sin Fin10:21
  • 2Potación de Guaya09:48
  • 3Camino al Volver08:27
  • 4Saints Alive!
    (Carla Bley)
    08:35
  • 5Naked Bridges / Diving Brides
    (Carla Bley)
    10:05
This album invites the rather dubious but useful tag ‘chamber jazz’: predominantly restrained, this is music for the heart and mind rather than the feet and viscera. With their skilfully interweaving liens, the members of the trio share equal status. Each member comes to the fore here and there but no one pushes for star-status solos, and even ‘accompaniments’ are full of compelling detail.
Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine (Five stars)
 
The joint billing reflects the equal contributions each musician makes to this beautifully balanced and touching album.
Peter Bevan, Northern Echo
 
Carla Bley publie son deuxième disque chez ECM. Le precedent, avec la meme équipe, revisitait les classiques de la pianiste et chef d’orchestre. Ici il s’agit d’originaux, avec notamment une de ces suites en trois mouvements que Carla Bley affectionne, ‘Andando el Tiempo’, qui donne son titre à l’album. Sur ce tryptique, Andy Shepaprd apparaît dans le plénitude de son art. Son lyrisme passe tantôt par la suggestion, tantôt par de brusques poussées expressionnistes. […] Si son éclatante maîtrise ressort dès la première ècoute, on n’est pas moins frappe par tous ces petits cailloux miraculeux que le grand Steve Swallow dépose au bord de sa route.
Jean-François Mondot, Jazz Magazine
 
Man darf davon ausgehen, dass die Schöpferin von mehr als fünfhundert stilistisch vielschichtigen, innovativen, geistreichen und oft auch von einer gepflegten Ironie aufgeheiterten Kompositionen an ihrem Jubeltag viel Schönes und Wohltuendes zu hören bekam. Aber kaum etwas wird sich mit dem messen können, was Carla Bley den Jazz-Fans – wenn man so will, als umgekehrtes Geburtstagspräsent – schenkt, denn auf ihrem von Manfred Eicher produzierten 23. Album als Band-Leaderin findet sich eine Handvoll neuer Kompositionen, die alles in sich tragen, was ihre kreativen Qualitäten ausmacht: klare Strukturen mit verblüffenden Wendungen, intelligente Leichtigkeit anstelle brachialen Virtuosentums und feinsinniger Witz als Salz in der musikalischen Haute cuisine.
Peter Füssl, Kultur
 
Addiction and the pain of recovery are not, perhaps, the most festive of topics with which to mark one’s 80th birthday. Yet the American pianist Carla Bley is not just one of jazz history’s most iconoclastic figures; she is also capable of turning the most moribund of topics into a cause for celebration. Thus this three-part work, released near Bley’s birthday, is a life-affirming triumph.
Chris Pearson, The Times
 
Her coolly ravishing new album, ‘Andando el Tiempo’ (‘In the Course of Time’) […] features a handful of inventions for her longtime trio with Mr. Swallow and the saxophonist Andy Sheppard. Chamberlike and willowy, suffused with melancholy, it reflects her sly noncompliance with jazz and classical conventions, which has been a prevalent theme of her half-century career.
Nate Chinen, The New York Times
 
Mit ihrem neuen Album bestätigt Carla Bley zu ihrem 80. Geburtstag, was für eine erstaunliche Jazzmusikerin sie ist.
Thomas Steinfeld, Süddeutsche Zeitung
 
Bewusst langsam vergeht die Zeit in dieser Musik. Jede Art von Muskelspiel, von virtuosem Beeindrucken-Wollen vermeidet sie. Und es entsteht eine Magie wie bei Gedichten aus ganz wenigen Worten – oder Erzählungen mit vielen kleinen Rätseln zwischen knappen, wohlformulierten Sätzen. Lieder ohne Worte, leiser Jazz – und Trio-Kammermusik zugleich. Das ist die aktuelle Musik von Carla Bley. Musik, die sich in eigenen Kategorien bewegt. Der Lauf der Zeit: Die Komponistin Carla Bley hat ihn bewundernswert im Griff.
Roland Spiegel, BR Klassik
 
Carla, die sich stets als Komponistin, nie als Pianistin bezeichnet, hat ihr Tastenspiel zu einem  ganz ureigenen, persönlichen und jederzeit wiedererkennbaren Personalstil entwickelt. Ihr sprödes Klavier, Swallows singender Fünfsaiter und Sheppards lyrisch gestimmtes Tenor-/Sopransaxofon sind unverwechselbare Stimmen, die ein unverwechselbares Ensemble ergeben. So klingt kein anderes Trio.
Berthold Klostermann, Fono Forum
 
Über zwanzig Jahre besteht dieses Trio nun, und das erklärt das filigrane Ineinandergreifen der drei Instrumente. So laufen die Melodien manchmal vom einen zum anderen weiter, und andernorts überlappen sich drei verschiedene Linienführungen zu einem vielschichtigen Gesamtklang […] Die differenziert abgemischten Aufnahmen unterstreichen diese Einmaligkeit, indem sie Klavier, Saxofon und Elektrobass einerseits klar positionieren und andererseits eine perfekte Balance erreichen, bei der jeder das gleiche Gewicht besitzt.
Werner Stiefele, Stereoplay
 
As ever, Bley’s sense of melodic line and thematic structure drives the music, whether through the Spanish-tinged narrative of the title suite or the witty allusions of the Mendelssohneque wedding tune. And she more than fulfills her improvisational duties, emphasizing her often-underused gifts as a pianist. Indeed, her playing is so strong that there are times when the music feels not so much charted as collectively improvised.
J.D. Considine, Downbeat (Five stars)
 
Bley is never showy, always acute and incisive. It’s always she who sets the tone, as when she lights a course through the exposed intricacies of ‘Potación de Guaya’. But the music depends on the astuteness of the trio as a unity, and the elaboration of their gameplay, their gradual shift of tone and the injection of an initially tentative sprightliness, is just delightful, the resolution of the suite a masterful pas de trois.
Tim Owen, Dalston Sound
 
Wie stets reiht die Dame am Flügel sehr reduziert und melodisch Note an Note, derweil Swallow seinen singenden E-Bass mit viel Liebe und Feingefühl in die elegischen Kompositionen einwebt. Darüber schwebt das zauberhaft duftige Horn von Sheppard, der den Wohlklang elegant überglänzt. Ein gegenseitiges Geben und Nehmen, das sanft swingt, einen Rhythmus und Höhepunkt findet und immer wieder still ausklingt – als höchst delikater Kammerjazz!
Sven Thielmann, HiFi+Records
 
Tough as it is to believe Carla Bley is now 80 years old, it’s not hard at all to hear that her questing spirit is undiminished on this album of new work. With saxophonist Andy Sheppard and bassist Steve swallow – her go-to musical partners of 20 years – by her side, Bley continues to navigate through knotty chord structures, explore the elasticity of time and tease out the nuanceds of her own compositions, which seem at first to be pure products of the cerebrum but soon reveal a tremendous depth of feeling.
Mac Randall, Jazz Times
 
Ein lohnendes, cooles Spätwerk, unklassisch trommellos, dafür mit den feinen Saxofonen von Andy Sheppard.
Markus Schneider, Rolling Stone (Germany)
In time for Carla Bley’s 80th birthday on May 11, here is a new album by her outstanding trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow. This particular trio, in existence now for more than twenty years, has come to be the primary vehicle for conveying her compositions to the world. It’s a challenging task: “When I write for the trio,” Carla explained to the Detroit Metro-Times recently, “it’s really big band music reduced. I have to play way over my head and so do the guys. They have to take on a lot more than they would if I still had a big band.”
For listeners, one of the great pleasures of Carla’s small group work is hearing more of her unique piano playing. Where she once insisted that she was “one per cent player and ninety-nine per cent composer,” she allows that in recent years the player has been obliged to gain ground, inspired by the examples of Sheppard and Swallow. The subtle interaction of the players is well-served by the clarity of this new recording, and all three of them shine here – Carla with her spare, thoughtful playing, Swallow with his perfectly poised and elegant electric bass, Sheppard with his poignant saxophones.
 
A special event in its own right, Andando el Tiempo can also be considered a companion volume to 2013’s Trios album, described by All About Jazz as “the most perfect of chamber records, filled with shrewd surprises and a delicate dramaturgy that reveals itself further with each and every listen.” Trios marked the first occasion on which the independently-minded Bley had worked under the direction of a recording producer, and Manfred Eicher, Carla, Steve Swallow and Andy Sheppard returned to Lugano’s RSI Studio in November 2015 for the new recording. Where Trios revisited older pieces, Andando el Tiempo features all new music of wide emotional compass, and underlines Bley’s undimmed originality and resourcefulness as a jazz composer.
 
The powerful three-part title composition – which addresses the trials and tribulations of recovery from addiction – moves through sorrow to hopefulness and joy. “It was written as I watched a friend go through the condition and come out the other end,” writes Carla in the liner notes. “‘Sin Fin’ is the realization that the endless cycle of medication required to stay free from anxiety and pain is becoming insufferable. ‘Potación de Guaya’ is the ongoing sorrow felt by everyone affected. ‘Camino al Volver’ is the work of returning to a healthy and sustainable life...”
 
“Saints Alive!” (“an expression used by old ladies sitting on the porch in the cool of the evening when they exchanged especially juicy gossip”) sets up some animated conversations, with striking statements from Steve Swallow’s bass guitar and Andy Sheppard’s soprano sax. The stately “Naked Bridges/Diving Brides”, written as a wedding gift for Sheppard and his wife Sara , draws influence from Mendelssohn and the poetry of Paul Haines, Carla’s librettist for earlier works including Escalator Over The Hill and Tropic Appetites. (The piece’s title, in fact, derives from Haines’ poem “Peking Widow”: From naked bridges / Diving brides relax / In freefall fistfuls / Of sparkling albumen.)
 
*
 
“I’m like a slow sponge, I take in ideas from everywhere, and when I eventually find my notes, I know they’re the right ones.”
 
Carla Bley once attributed her originality as a composer to blissful ignorance of “right” and “wrong” ways to write a song. Early role models included Thelonious Monk, Erik Satie and Miles Davis, all of whom achieved much with few notes. However, Bley’s oeuvre also includes maximalist pieces such as the epic “chronotransduction” Escalator over the Hill, an album of Fancy Chamber Music, and many spirited pieces for bands of all sizes. Critic Nat Hentoff once wrote that her scores “are matched only by those of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus for yearning lyricism, explosive exultation and other expressions of the human condition”.
 
For forty years Bley documented her music on WATT, the ECM-distributed label she co-founded with Michael Mantler and today runs with Steve Swallow. Trios (2013) marked Carla Bley’s first recording for ECM itself. Further recordings for ECM are in preparation.
 
Among the many awards bestowed upon Carla Bley are a Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition (1972), the German Jazz Trophy "A Life for Jazz" (2009), and honorary doctorates from l’Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail (2012) and the New England Conservatory (2014). In 2015 she received an NEA Jazz Master Award: “I can think of many musicians who deserve this award, and won't be getting it,” she commented. “Luckily, I'm not one of them."