Carla Bley and Steve Swallow - Duets.

Format:

Video

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Avant-garde.

Post-Bop.

United States and Canada.

Americans.

Local Subjects:

Avant-garde.

Post-Bop.

United States and Canada.

Americans.

Genre:

Performance

Physical Description:

1 online resource (31 minutes)

Place of Publication:

Paris, Ile-de-France : Qwest TV, 1988.

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

video file

Summary:

From the first frames of this footage, focusing on the avid, loving looks exchanged between Carla Bley behind her keyboard and Steve Swallow stooped over the neck of his electric bass, one can already sense the complete communion these two great musicians will engage in throughout these thirty minutes of inspired music. Essential figures in a certain type of jazz modernity that, born of the emancipating free jazz movement, led little by little to the creation of a sort of "chamber jazz," reinventing the relationship between writing and improvisation, Carla Bley as keyboard player and bandleader and Steve Swallow as electric bass player have undeniably marked the past 50 years of jazz history with their genius. Partners in life and onstage, since the seventies, they have developed music that is at once learned and popular, simple and refined, music that found a sort of quintessence in the mid-eighties when this duo was formed. Most likely recorded in 1987, this concert is a wonderful example: Carla Bley at the piano, finding her personal voice somewhere between Gospel, Satie, Kurt Weill and Thelonious Monk, supported by Swallow’s inimitable round, woody, vibrant sound. This streamlined, sensual, intimate, hyper-melodic and insidiously ironic music that unfolds without pretentiousness or ostentatious virtuosity, simply supported by a light groove and constant lyricism, revels in itself like a romantic discourse… Stéphane Ollivier

Notes:

Title from resource description page (viewed July 15, 2024).