Paul Bley - Solo in Mondsee

[Pete C]

Has anybody heard this new solo release yet?

[Derek Taylor]

Yes. I like it. Though it's definitely Bley in a "milder" mode. Very beautiful, but also kind of hermetic.

[stonemonkts]

I've just ordered this one, and also "Tears", another solo recording he did back in 1983 on Owl. Thanks for the heads up.

[Pete C]

For the longest time ECM had a solo concert in Lisbon (2000) in the can that they were planning to release. It seems to have been superseded by this.

[Steve Lake]

Originally Posted by Pete C

For the longest time ECM had a solo concert in Lisbon (2000) in the can that they were planning to release.

No, that's an urban myth. The Lisbon concert must be in somebody else's archive.

S.

[Pete C]

This must be where I saw the reference:

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/pbley.htm

"ECM Records will be recording Paul's solo piano concert at the Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon, Portugal on October 20, 2000."

[Mike Schwartz]

Today is the official release date..... received this promotional info


Released in time for Paul Bley's 75th birthday on this autumn, Solo in Mondsee is the first Bley solo piano album on ECM in 35 years, and may be considered a very belated 'sequel' to 1972's Open, To Love. In the interim the Canadian-born pianist has been acknowledged as one of the very great solo improvisers, documenting his unaccompanied playing at many addresses - including his own Improvising Artists Inc (IAI) - and has been featured on ECM with many other projects and ensembles. It was, however, producer Manfred Eicher who first prompted Bley to take the solo route. Bley talks about this in the new book Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM (to be released in the USA in September 2007):

"When Manfred called to ask 'Do you want to make a solo album?' the idea had never occurred to me. That's how early it was. The call from ECM coincided with a period when I was trying to be the slowest pianist in the world, which in turn was connected to the work I had just finished with my electronic period: One of the things I liked in electronics was the possibility of long sustains. I demanded, on going back to acoustic music, that the piano itself should be able to duplicate what I'd been able to get electronically." This was, to a large extent, achieved on Open, To Love, an album that looked at space, silence and slow tempos, and emphasized the singing interplay of overtones in the decay of struck chords in a way that still seems radical more than three decades later. If an 'ECM aesthetic' can be said to exist, that album of slow songs, 'with raindrops in the right hand' (as Manfred Eicher once said), provided one of the early blueprints.

That was then. The idea of a new Bley solo album had been raised during sessions for Not Two, Not One, the album Paul made with old cohorts Gary Peacock and Paul Motian in a revival of the 1960s Bley Trio: the same line-up that had played on (most of) Paul Bley with Gary Peacock. Not Two, Not One recorded at New York's Avatar Studio in 1998 had been the first of Bley's ECM discs to feature him on a Bösendorfer piano.

A little later that year, Manfred Eicher recorded András Schiff playing Schubert fantasies on a superb Bösendorfer Imperial Grand in Mondsee, Austria and decided to invite Bley to the same location. It seemed a logical continuation: first the great interpreter, and then the master improviser.

Bley introduces his recital with a thunderclap, striking the bass end of the piano's harp of strings. Ten pieces of jewelled brilliance follow, with a remarkable turnover of ideas: each of these 'Mondsee Variations' is packed with musical surprises, and unexpected changes of direction. "Bley is a genius", Nat Hentoff wrote in the Village Voice. "There are few pianists in any form of music who so intriguingly interweave the surprises of both beauty and the intellect." Kaleidoscopically-splintered melodies, distant memories of standards, abstractions of the blues and spontaneous free playing are some of the subjects of these ever-changing tracks which repay repeated listening.

[dorshecraig]

Just yesterday I played ECM 1023 "Open, To Love." Beautiful music and sequenced very well. I'll have to get the Mondsee.

[stonemonkts]

The Mondsee recording finds Bley in very good form. After two listens I can say any fan of solo Bley would like this...it is almost a sort of "Bley's take on Bley" set of improvisations, if you will. He meanders around many of his favorite compositions which in past years were played more straight on, at least in Bley's terms.

This is an excellent addition to his solo body of work.

[Bill Barton]

I've listened a couple of times to this one and would tend to agree with Derek that it's a bit "hermetic." Lovely, low-key, mostly introspective...

It's highly recommended for Bley fans (and I know they are legion hereabouts.)

[Xavier]

Listened to the disc twice so far - definately agree with the last two posts, this is very good Bley.

[Bill Barton]

After a few more spins I'm hearing more humor and intensity than I did the first couple of times. So, perhaps "introspective" and "hermetic" don't tell the whole story. It's a superb disc and will place highly on my Best of 2007 list.

That line about "distant memories of standards" in the promo material is spot-on. They aren't really "quotes" per se, more like intimations.

[Steve Lake]

Originally Posted by Bill Barton

.

That line about "distant memories of standards" in the promo material is spot-on. They aren't really "quotes" per se, more like intimations.

Thanks Bill, glad I got that right!

steve

[Steve Lake]

It's been gratifying to see Bley get positive and insightful reviews for this recording in Europe - it's been an album of the month/week/day etc in newspapers and magazines from Norway to Italy. There is a growing awareness of how important Paul has been as catalyst and influence in the history of the music...

s.