Emil Borg News Today

‘Her music is a bold conversation, full of jokes and twists, dictating the rhythm of everything else,’ wrote Gillian Reynolds

She worked within a scene whose promoters, fans, critics and musicians tend to misunderstand the role of the jazz composer

Carla Bley was a force in jazz even before she made her first albums, as her compositions were recorded by notable modernists of the 1960s.

Jazz musician and composer whose prolific output was deliriously entertaining, bewildering and bewitching

Carla Bley, the influential pianist, composer and bandleader who was an important figure in the avant-garde jazz movement of the 1960s, has died at 87.

Bley's pieces could be ethereally beautiful or subversively brash, but always found a grandeur without tilting into pretension.