Gary Burton Quartet With Orchestra - A Genuine Tong Funeral (composed by Carla Bley) (1968)

Some classic Carla Bley this Friday and next, starting with "A dark opera without words... based on emotions towards death - from the most irreverent to those of deepest loss", as she described it.  Written between 1964 and 1967, Bley expanded the work with sections specifically for vibraphone quartet when Gary Burton expressed an interest in it.  Thus the final version came together as this enjoyably strange record, with members of the Jazz Composer's Orchestra supporting Burton's quartet.

With 15 tracks, several under a minute long, A Genuine Tong Funeral is a great insight into Bley's versatility as a composer as far back as the mid-60s.  The dirge-like themes that might be expected for such a weighty concept are just as likely to be sitting alongside jaunty, upbeat passages, or the occasional full-on blast of free jazz skronk towards the end.  Burton proves to be the ideal musician to front the project, giving its spindly complexity an accessible cool.  ECM's Dreams So Real from the following decade might be the deserved classic of 'Burton Plays Bley', but this ambitious little oddity is just as worthy of recommendation in its own right.

 

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pw: sgtg

 

Gary Burton plays Carla Bley at SGTG:

Dreams So Real

Gary Burton at SGTG:

Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett

Fluid Rustle (Eberhard Weber)

Lyric Suite For Sextet (with Chick Corea) 

Carla Bley at SGTG:

The Jazz Composer's Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Trios 

Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard & Steve Swallow - Trios (2013)

With the release of Trios, legendary jazz composer Carla Bley finally moved over from Watt, the ECM-distributed label that had released her music for decades, to the Manfred mothership.  This first appearance on ECM tied in with the re-establishment of the Bley-Sheppard-Swallow trio, whose last album in this format had been Songs With Legs in 1994.  They've since released a further two albums.

Trios offered no great surprises in the tracklist, being a Thelonious Monk-like revisitation of earlier compositions.  But like Monk, this just underlines how durable and outstanding Bley's iconoclastic body of work as a writer is.  The three lengthy suites here, with two shorter tracks upfront, might largely date back to the 80s, but they're cast afresh here as gorgeous immersions in sumptuous chamber jazz.  The simple palette of Bley's piano, Swallow's nimble bass guitar and Sheppard's breathy sax make for nothing short of a masterpiece that lets the strength of the writing and playing stand centre stage, and is a delight to return to over and over.

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pw: sgtg

Carla Bley at SGTG:

The Jazz Composers Orchestra

Fleur Carnivore

Appearing Nightly

Gary Burton & Keith Jarrett - s/t (1971)

Another look at that period in Keith Jarrett's early career, previously visited on Expectations, where he was still figuring out his overall direction.  Sharing the limelight for this album was vibes maestro Gary Burton, who'd been recording for longer but was in a similar phase of experimenting with his modes of expression.  Both would end up at ECM within the year, and both had already recorded for Atlantic, the label for this self-titled and often under-rated LP.

The material is all Jarrett's except for Como En Vietnam written by Steve Swallow, the bassist for the album.  Jarrett takes a brief solo on soprano sax on that track, but otherwise sticks to piano.  Gary Burton sounds great throughout, with his cool, languid tone shining on the mid-tempo material, but equally capable on the upbeat, knottier moments.  The other supporting voice is session guitarist Sam Brown, who adds the same bluesy, funky touch that he brought to Expectations.  Think of this great little record as a distillation of some of the best bits of Expectations, with the huge added bonus of Gary Burton, and you can't go wrong.

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Gary Burton Quintet - Dreams So Real: Music of Carla Bley (1976)

A definite Spring favourite this one, with a clean, fresh sound like a homemade lemonade.  The great four-malletted vibesman was accompanied for one of his most legendary recordings by drums, electric bass, and two guitarists, a lineup that really lets the strength of the composer's writing shine through.

Recorded in the same month as Pat Metheny's ageless debut album, Dreams So Real is from the dead-centre of ECM's purple patch when classic after classic were being seemingly effortlessly turned out, and needless to say is a gorgeous listen.  Burton is highlighted solo on the beautifully tender Jesus Maria, and the larger part of the rest of the album is in a mellow vein too.

One notable exception is the three-song medley of the second track, in which Metheny and Goodrick (the latter too often underrated, in the shadow of the former who'd become a superstar) bop along with a funky, rock-solid underpinning from Steve Swallow, who himself had the most direct connection to Carla Bley.  Bley herself of course would remain just ECM-adjacent until much more recently, so this flawless record would be key to highlighting her music on the main label.

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