The fourth recording from pianist Carla Bley’s long-running trio with saxophonist Andy Sheppard and bassist/partner Steve Swallow, 2020’s Life Goes On, is an intimate and lyrical album built solidly around the group’s deep musical connection. Produced by ECM’s Manfred Eicher, the record arrives four years after the equally compelling Andando el Tiempo and finds Bley and her cohorts in a relaxed mood. Where Andando el Tiempo was a deeply poetic, classical-leaning recording, Life Goes On is more casual in tone. The album consists of three multi-part works that serve as loosely connected thematic ideas. The first work and title track, “Life Goes On,” is a laconic, friendly blues that Bley sets up for Swallow and Sheppard to then join in with a playful call-and-response interplay. That is followed in the series by “On,” a languid Thelonious Monk-esque piece built around a steadily descending chordal pattern. The third movement in the piece, “And On,” is played with dusky resonance by Sheppard and brings to mind a reworked take on John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Similarly, the final movement, “And Then One Day,” also draws upon the modern jazz tradition, evoking the rolling, minor-key atmosphere of the standard “On Green Dolphin Street.” From there, they delve into the three-part “Beautiful Telephones,” a spare, woozy piece that finds the trio draping each other in long noirish lines. The album’s closing work, “Copycat,” is more off-the-cuff as Bley sets up a lively thematic statement that Swallow and Sheppard then repeat in a jaunty, birdlike game of group improvisation. It’s a nuanced game Bley and her trio have been playing for over 20 years, and one that never fails to uncover unexpected musical delights.
Released in 2020. Possibly her last issued recording.
Had the pleasure of hearing the trio at Turner Sims, Southampton.
Sad to read that.
My first encounter with the good woman was the Inside Out festival at Hawth? Near Gatwick in early ‘90s. She had a very loud and exciting big band. I went with my daughter as she was an Andy Sheppard groupie and he was in the band.
Richard, I will always remember Gary Valente rasping away.
Sad news. I saw that Bley band with Valente, Slagle et al in North America in the early 90s. I think the last time I saw her was duet with Steve Swallow a few years later, although I think I might have seen the trio with Sheppard and Swallow in the 2000s.
Well done! He’s such a great artist and he had some great collaborations as well (eg. Mike Stern, Simon Phillips, Dave Weckl, Tom Kennedy, etc.). IMHO he’s one of the best for jazz fusion.
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