Carla Bley -

Carla Bley (May 11, 1936 – October 17, 2023) was an American jazz pianist and composer who appeared on 1970s albums by Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Gary Burton, and husband Michael Mantler. As a bandleader, she released eight studio albums between 1974 and 1989 on WATT Works.

Background

Carla Bley was born Lovella May Borg on May 11, 1936, in Oakland, California, to Swedish-American parents. Her father, Emil Borg, served as a piano teacher and church choir director and provided her with early instruction in both disciplines. Encouraged to sing and read music from an early age, she developed an intuitive grasp of musical structure. However, after her mother’s sudden death when Carla was eight, her formal training gave way to more self-directed pursuits. By her teens, she had left church music behind entirely and immersed herself in the physicality and freedom of roller skating.

At seventeen, she left the Bay Area for New York City and took a job as a cigarette girl at Birdland, the city’s premier jazz club. There she absorbed the nightly sounds of Count Basie’s orchestra and became attuned to the subtleties of phrasing and arrangement. Fascinated by the uncredited craft behind big band scores—particularly those of Ernie Wilkins—she began writing on her own. Around this time, she met pianist Paul Bley, who encouraged her to compose for his group. Adopting the stage name Karen Borg, she toured with him before taking his surname in 1957, the year they married and she became professionally known as Carla Bley.

Through the early 1960s, Bley established herself as a composer on the cutting edge of modern jazz. George Russell recorded her piece “Bent Eagle” for Stratusphunk (1960), while Jimmy Giuffre included her composition “Ictus” on Thesis (1961). Paul Bley featured her work exclusively on his Barrage session for ESP-Disk in 1965, and earlier recordings like Footloose and Touching incorporated her sparse, open frameworks that bridged melody with space for abstraction. She contributed to recordings by Don Ellis (Essence), Art Farmer (Sing Me Softly of the Blues), and George Russell (The Outer View), and was an uncredited force behind the evolving language of free jazz composition.

In 1964, Bley co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild alongside like-minded players seeking autonomy from club constraints. This period marked her shift from sideline contributor to scene-shaping organizer. She soon entered a partnership with trumpeter Michael Mantler, forming both a domestic and professional unit that would underpin her next creative phase.

Jazz Realities

Carla Bley and Michael Mantler made their album headline debut on the 1966 Fontana release Jazz Realities, a collaborative effort with veteran American soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy.

The album presents a tightly integrated quintet session shaped by Bley and Mantler’s compositional frameworks and Lacy’s foreground presence. Bley alternates between percussive clusters and staggered harmonic inserts, shaping the ensemble’s contour around the brass and reed lines. Mantler’s trumpet enters in staggered counterpoint or rides alongside Lacy’s spiraling figures, which dart and recombine across modal pivots and scalar diversions. Bassist Kent Carter supplies textural variation with pliant arco runs and walking lines, while drummer Aldo Romano threads the set with fractured cadences and irregular snare commentary. The ensemble prioritizes structured freedom, aligning scored shapes with conversational volatility.

A1. “Doctor” (7:45)
A2. “Oni Puladi” (5:25)
A3. “J.S.” (3:35) – Mantler, Bley

B1. “Walking Batterie Woman” (6:18) – Bley, Mantler
B2. “Closer” (5:30)
B3. “Communications No.7” (9:34) – Mantler

The group recorded Jazz Realities on January 11, 1966, in Baarn, Holland, during a brief European session linked to the Jazz Composers Guild’s post-Guild activities. Fontana issued the album later that year as part of its avant-garde jazz series.

Escalator Over the Hill

Carla Bley and Paul Haines released a collaborative album, Escalator Over the Hill, in December 1971 on WATT.

Conceived as a “chronotransduction,” the project took shape across three years of staggered sessions and shifting ensembles. Bley composed and arranged all music, adapting Haines’ texts into an expansive sonic narrative performed by over forty musicians, including members of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and a rotating cast of international soloists.

Guitarist John McLaughlin trades lines with bassist Jack Bruce in a fluid, electrically driven subset dubbed Jack’s Traveling Band. Bley anchors the larger ensemble with organ, celeste, and chime figures, while Michael Mantler and fellow trumpeter Enrico Rava push lines outward against reeds by Gato Barbieri and Jimmy Lyons.

Escalator Over the Hill opens with a tumbling convergence of horns and percussion, tethered briefly by a calliope figure before collapsing into shrieking intervals and dispersed rhythm. Carla Bley sets the tonal foundation on organ and celeste, while trombonists Roswell Rudd and Jimmy Knepper create clustered harmonies that fracture rather than resolve. “Hotel Overture” surges through tempo shifts and tonal swells, its intensity shaped by Gato Barbieri’s scalding tenor outbursts and Karl Berger’s glinting vibraphone.

The mood shifts rapidly across scenes: “Smalltown Agonist” builds from a sparse texture of violin and piano into an angular alto saxophone solo by Jimmy Lyons, while “Rawalpindi Blues” fuses Eastern drone with slow-lurch blues phrasing, Jack Bruce stretching vocal lines across a field of sustained brass and distorted guitar from John McLaughlin. In “A.I.R. (All India Radio),” Don Cherry enters with compressed trumpet phrases that stagger over a static pulse before dissolving into extended modal haze. The final side returns to freeform montage, with vocal fragments, overlapping ensemble gestures, and a locked-groove mechanical chant that spirals endlessly on vinyl pressings. Bley uses repetition not as structure but as disorientation, threading disparate ensemble settings—rock quartet, chamber nonet, big band, calliope orchestra—into a continuous splicing of pace and tension. Each section occupies its own logic; no transition settles. The entire suite resists closure.

A1. “Hotel Overture” (13:11)
B1. “This Is Here…” (6:02)
B2. “Like Animals” (1:21)
B3. “Escalator over the Hill” (4:57)
B4. “Stay Awake” (1:31)
B5. “Ginger and David” (1:39)
B6. “Song to Anything That Moves” (2:22)

C1. “EOTH Theme” (0:35)
C2. “Businessmen” (5:38)
C3. “Ginger and David Theme” (0:57)
C4. “Why” (2:19)
C5. “It’s Not What You Do” (0:17)
C6. “Detective Writer Daughter” (3:16)
C7. “Doctor Why” (1:28)
C8. “Slow Dance (Transductory Music)” (1:50)
C9. “Smalltown Agonist” (5:24)

D1. “End of Head” (0:38)
D2. “Over Her Head” (2:38)
D3. “Little Pony Soldier” (4:36)
D4. “Oh Say Can You Do?” (1:11)
D5. “Holiday in Risk” (3:10)
D6. “Holiday in Risk Theme” (0:52)

E1. “A.I.R. (All India Radio)” (3:58)
E2. “Rawalpindi Blues” (12:44)
F1. “End of Rawalpindi” (9:40)
F2. “End of Animals” (1:26)
F3. “…And It’s Again” (8:55)

Recording took place intermittently between 1968 and 1971, primarily in New York, with sessions coordinated and produced by Michael Mantler. The final release appeared as a triple-LP box set with lyric booklet, photos, and credits. Side six concluded with a locked groove on “…And It’s Again,” allowing the piece to loop indefinitely.

Escalator Over the Hill received widespread acknowledgment upon release, including Jazz Album of the Year 1972 by Melody Maker readers and France’s Académie du Jazz award for best modern jazz album.

Tropic Appetites

Carla Bley released her first bandleader album, Tropic Appetites, in 1974 on WATT.

Structured as an eight-part suite with lyrics by longtime collaborator Paul Haines, the album draws its textual imagery from Haines’ travels in Southeast Asia and unfolds through sharply delineated scenes that juxtapose contrasting musical languages. Bley directs a compact octet, shifting between organ, piano, clavinet, celeste, marimba, and cello, often within the same piece.

Tropic Appetites unfolds through tightly structured sequences that stage abrupt shifts in density, rhythm, and register. Carla Bley alternates ensemble voicings with narrow instrumental palettes, writing for specific contrasts between brass, reeds, voice, and strings. The eleven-minute opener, “What Will Be Left Between Us and the Moon Tonight?,” builds in slow crosscurrents of piano, horns, and percussion, eventually breaking into layered meters before collapsing into a low-slung Latin coda.

“Enormous Tots” alternates through stagey recitation, sharp tempo pivots, and thickened ensemble interjections, its bawdy sections arranged with clipped phrasing and dry interlocking parts. “Indonesian Dock Sucking Supreme” shifts from hushed tension to wide-panned ensemble breaks and reassembled motifs, pairing saxophone and violin in counter-motion while Bley’s organ lines cut against the forward pulse.

“Song of the Jungle Stream” and “Nothing” recapitulate earlier figures in more fragmented form, with staggered rhythms, layered spoken lines, and dissolving cadences. Between these longer movements, Bley inserts stripped-down interludes: “In India” stages a minimal vocal drone against sparse percussion, while “Funnybird Song” compresses character invention into under ninety seconds.

A1. “What Will Be Left Between Us and the Moon Tonight?” (11:06)
A2. “In India” (1:11)
A3. “Enormous Tots” (6:06)
A4. “Caucasian Bird Riffles” (5:10)

B1. “Funnybird Song” (1:19)
B2. “Indonesian Dock Sucking Supreme” (8:56)
B3. “Song of the Jungle Stream” (10:15)
B4. “Nothing” (3:35)

Throughout, Julie Tippetts carries Haines’ text with clipped vibrato and sharp line divisions, while Howard Johnson intersperses secondary characters and low-register color across tuba, baritone sax, and bass clarinet. Michael Mantler’s trumpet parts act as structural markers, offsetting Dave Holland’s alternation between low-end pulse and bowed cello. Paul Motian’s drumming remains fluid but non-linear, often entering as displacement or secondary rhythm rather than anchoring beat.

Bley recorded Tropic Appetites during 1973 and early 1974 with engineering and production by Michael Mantler, released as the first title on their co-founded imprint, WATT Records.

13 & 3/4

Michael Mantler and Carla Bley released a collaborative album, 13 & 3/4, in 1975 on WATT.

Bley’s contribution occupies the second half of the record, a continuous orchestral work titled 3/4, for Piano and Orchestra, scored and conducted by Bley with pianist Ursula Oppens as soloist. The piece situates the piano as both instigator and adversary, setting repeated, metrically locked figures against dense orchestral blocks.

Oppens articulates sharply etched patterns that advance with mechanical steadiness, while Bley shapes the surrounding ensemble into alternating masses and fissures. Trumpet Michael Mantler and trombone Michael Gibbs puncture the texture with sustained brass tones that lean against the piano’s motion. Low voices—tuba Bob Stewart and bass Peter Warren—anchor the harmonic floor, while upper winds and strings compress and release the surface density. Vibraphone and marimba figures from David Samuels reinforce the piece’s internal clock, mirrored by harp Patrice Fisher and sustained string clusters that keep the music in forward suspension rather than narrative development.

A1. “13 for Piano and Two Orchestras” (22:00)
B1. “3/4, for Piano and Orchestra” (23:45)

Recording took place in August 1975 at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, with mixing completed the following month at Scorpio Sound in London. Bley and Mantler produced the sessions, with engineering by Dennis Weinreich and assistance from John Hunt. WATT Works issued the album, with manufacturing and international marketing handled by ECM. Funding support came through the Ford Foundation’s 1975 Recording–Publication Program, and full scores and parts were made available through Watt Works.

Dinner Music

Carla Bley released her second bandleader album, Dinner Music, in 1977 on WATT.

Recorded with a nine-piece ensemble that alternates between small-group elasticity and full-brass coordination, the album spans a sequence of carefully arranged pieces threaded with irony, structural contrast, and ensemble interplay. Bley alternates between piano, organ, and occasional tenor saxophone, acting more as arranger and director than as soloist.

Dinner Music unfolds across interlinked tonal episodes, each shaped by shifting instrumental balances and contrasting temperaments. Roswell Rudd’s trombone serves as both anchor and disruptor, projecting sharp, declarative themes on “Sing Me Softly of the Blues” and pressing against ensemble phrases with blunt, ascending arcs. On “A New Hymn,” he shades the brass blend with long-tone laments, while his solos on “Ad Infinitum” push rhythmic stress points into irregular emphases, inflecting the festive tempo with scumbled drag. Carlos Ward alternates between alto saxophone and flute: his alto stabs and climbs through “Song Sung Long” before giving way to Michael Mantler’s clipped, angular trumpet blasts.

On “Funnybird Song,” Ward’s flute pairs off with Bob Stewart’s sliding tuba, each circling the other in opposing registers while the rhythm section maintains a mid-tempo Caribbean pulse. Richard Tee supports from within with suspended piano figures, linking harmonic changes behind Carla Bley’s organ clusters and ensemble voicings. “Dreams Are So Real” drapes slow brass textures over subdued electric guitar feedback from Eric Gale, whose reverb-swollen tones fade in and out of the brass lattice. Cornell Dupree takes over on “Ida Lupino” with dry, clipped phrases that punctuate a slow, Motown-like sway, while Bley and Ward exchange voice-leading roles on piano and tenor sax. Bley’s sole vocal appearance, “Dining Alone,” drifts across a narrow intervallic melody with subdued delivery, lightly brushed by guitar and saxophone flourishes.

A1. “Sing Me Softly of the Blues” (7:43)
A2. “Dreams So Real” (5:36)
A3. “Ad Infinitum” (5:54)
A4. “Dining Alone” (4:36) (lyrics by Carla Bley & John Hunt)

B1. “Song Sung Long” (6:02)
B2. “Ida Lupino” (7:57)
B3. “Funnybird Song” (3:05)
B4. “A New Hymn” (7:25)

Throughout, Steve Gadd restrains his usual force, outlining each chart with crisp, underplayed figures, while Gordon Edwards’ bass lines keep harmonic movement fluid without ever crowding the frame.

Sessions took place between July and September 1976 at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, with production by Bley and George James. WATT issued the album in partnership with ECM for international distribution.

European Tour 1977

In 1978, Carla Bley released European Tour 1977, recorded in September ’77 at Bavaria Musik Studios in Munich, Germany.

Presented under the Carla Bley Band name, the album captures her expanded working ensemble in a studio document shaped by road-honed interplay and orchestral precision. Bley plays organ and tenor saxophone, alternating roles between conductor and part-time front-line participant.

Trombonist Roswell Rudd and trumpeter Michael Mantler lock into sectional dialogue with Bob Stewart’s tuba, whose low-register phrasing anchors and destabilizes harmonic resolution. Saxophonists Elton Dean and Gary Windo push and pull at the edges of form, their alto and tenor voices splintering during ensemble tuttis and emerging during brief open spaces. French horn player John Clark adds inner color, bridging gaps between brass and reeds while also contributing guitar parts on select passages.

Terry Adams supplies sharp block chords and skeletal punctuation from the piano, trading functions with Bley’s organ voicings. Hugh Hopper holds the electric bass with methodical phrasing and dry harmonic counterpoint, often joined by his own bass drum to reinforce ensemble strikes. Drummer Andrew Cyrille—playing with deliberate restraint—spaces his accents to emphasize structural cues rather than rhythmic propulsion.

A1. “Rose and Sad Song” (11:11)
A2. “Wrong Key Donkey” (7:52)
A3. “Drinking Music” (4:26)
B1. “Spangled Banner Minor and Other Patriotic Songs” (19:17)
(including “Flags,” “And Now the Queen,” “King Korn,” and “The New National Anthem”)

Bley recorded the material in-studio following a run of European live dates with the same personnel. Sessions took place at Bavaria Musik Studios in Munich with Bley producing. WATT issued the album in partnership with ECM.

Musique Mécanique

Carla Bley released her third studio bandleader album, Musique Mécanique, in 1979 on WATT.

Composed for a tentet and structured around a three-part title suite, the album balances theatrical staging with orchestrated contrast and instrumental parody. Bley plays organ, acoustic piano, and toy piano, alternating between keyboard roles depending on the track’s internal logic. Her parts often cue transitions or undercut ensemble passages with ironic shifts in texture.

Musique Mécanique threads overlapping tonal systems and rigid patterns into staged collisions, often disrupting itself through exaggerated instrumental gestures and unexpected material textures. The opener, “440,” begins with faux fanfare pomp and staggered brass flourishes, framed by abrupt pauses and loosely timed solos that mimic a sitcom theme skewed into absurdity. “Jesus Maria and Other Spanish Strains” shifts between clipped dance pulses and wandering brass chorales, punctuated by Gary Windo’s childlike vocalizations that blur instrumental and vocal register.

The three-part title suite constructs and deconstructs mechanical repetition: “Musique Mécanique I” starts with fragmented bursts from toy piano and glockenspiel, over which Alan Braufman’s flute circles in asymmetrical dialogue with Michael Mantler’s trumpet. “At Midnight” introduces a vocal ostinato in halting sync with a slow, unchanging march; the voice recycles phrases against muted ensemble shuffling, each iteration drawing closer to collapse. “Musique Mécanique III” builds as a slowed, looping structure that mimics a stuck machine, marked by dissonant, low-register brass and a lockstep unison figure that stutters and resets.

A1. “440” (9:48)
A2. “Jesus Maria and Other Spanish Strains” (11:54)

B1. “Musique Mécanique I” (9:46)
B2. “Musique Mécanique II (At Midnight)” (7:02)
B3. “Musique Mécanique III” (6:28)

Throughout, Carla Bley places foreground elements at deliberate odds with ensemble unity, shaping her compositional forms through tightly controlled disorientation.

Sessions took place between August and November 1978 at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, with Bley producing. WATT released the album with ECM handling international distribution.

Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports

In May 1981, Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports appeared on Harvest (UK) and Columbia (US), the labels of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason. Conceived and written entirely by Carla Bley, the album functions as a showcase for her compositional voice in a rock-influenced studio setting. She scores the material for a hybrid ensemble of jazz and rock players, using tight sectional interplay and abrupt stylistic shifts to frame the vocal performances.

Robert Wyatt handles lead vocals across seven tracks, delivering Bley’s lyrics with phrasing that pivots between theatrical and introspective. Karen Kraft sings lead on the opener and returns on “Hot River” for duet and background parts. Guitarist Chris Spedding provides the album’s distorted edge, colliding with Bley’s layered keyboard figures. Bassist Steve Swallow outlines harmonic structure with electric tone clarity, while Michael Mantler’s trumpet punches across ensemble sections and bridges.

Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports unfolds like a staged collage of bright ensemble vignettes, shaped by Carla Bley’s offbeat constructions and voiced almost entirely by Robert Wyatt. The album pivots between jagged theatrical numbers and warped balladry, anchored by Mason’s even-keeled pulse and punctuated by brass-heavy turns. “Can’t Get My Motor to Start” opens in slapstick motion, with clipped interjections from harmonica and guitar circling around Karen Kraft’s exaggerated delivery. “I Was Wrong” builds from slow vamping to sharply angled horn responses that tilt behind Wyatt’s increasingly anxious narration. “Siam” drapes its two-note riff in looped and reversed vocal figures before brass blurts and a sliding tempo burst the frame.

“Hot River” smolders through sustained keyboard pads and a climbing vocal that peaks in wordless vocalise before falling into echoing dissonance. “Boo to You Too” sets a staggered rhythm underneath chant-like phrases and abrupt breaks, punctuated by sax stabs and a descending trombone line. “Wervin’” rides a cycling pulse that pulls the ensemble into stretched phrases and overlapping solo fragments. “I’m a Mineralist” closes the album with a minimalist parody—Wyatt intones a list of geological fixations over clipped rhythmic units and stratified instrumental entrances, culminating in vocal counterpoint that both mirrors and distorts the form beneath it. Throughout, the record filters Bley’s language through performance that favors exaggerated gesture, modular shape, and playful constraint.

A1. “Can’t Get My Motor to Start” (3:39)
A2. “I Was Wrong” (4:12)
A3. “Siam” (4:48)
A4. “Hot River” (5:16)

B1. “Boo to You Too” (3:26)
B2. “Do Ya?” (4:36)
B3. “Wervin’” (3:58)
B4. “I’m a Mineralist” (6:16)

Reed player Gary Windo moves between tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, and flute, frequently layering with trombonist Gary Valente and tuba player Howard Johnson to form brassy, cartoonish textures. Bley’s arrangements place voices and instruments in rotating focus, using contrast rather than improvisation as the driver of momentum. On “Boo to You Too,” pianist Terry Adams contributes additional voicings, and on the opening track, he handles harmonica and clavinet in call-response with Kraft’s vocal.

Bley and Mason co-produced the album at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, during October 1979, with Michael Mantler engineering. James Guthrie completed the mix. Hipgnosis and Geoff Halpin designed the cover. Although recorded two years earlier, the album remained unreleased until spring 1981 when Harvest issued the music under Mason’s name. Despite this, Mason played a strictly rhythmic role behind the album’s soloists.

Carla Bley released her fourth studio bandleader album, Social Studies, in 1981 on WATT.

Scored for a nine-piece ensemble and structured around tightly controlled forms, the album foregrounds Bley’s strengths as a composer-arranger, with precise thematic writing offset by layered counterpoint and calculated disruptions. She alternates between piano and organ, often guiding structural shifts and layering static or modal voicings under brass-dominated textures.

Michael Mantler delivers trumpet lines that mark the perimeter of ensemble movement, while saxophonists Carlos Ward and Tony Dagradi split lead phrasing and section support, with Ward contributing alto and tenor passages and Dagradi doubling on clarinet.

Social Studies arranges its six pieces around interlocking wind voicings, anchored by minimal propulsion and piano or organ commentary. “Reactionary Tango” moves with a stilted dance-meter under layered brass voicings and intermittent upper-register piano phrases. Horn players pass lines in staggered succession, giving the ensemble a split-dialogue motion that only deepens once Bley shifts to organ in the final stretch. “Copyright Royalties” and “Valse Sinistre” both follow tempered rhythmic figures with mild dynamic variation; brass players alternate short solo statements with sectional support.

“Útviklingssang” adopts a slow pace shaped by Carlos Ward’s alto phrasing, which threads through subdued chords and softly receding lines. “Floater” begins in open-form drift but soon coalesces around deep-register bass pulses and restrained brass interplay. “Walking Batteriewoman” breaks the pattern with faster pacing, sharp tenor turns, and tighter ensemble breaks that hint at a more pressurized structure. Across the set, Bley maintains a chessboard sense of placement: each part occupies space without crowding, and intensity builds through movement rather than volume.

A1. “Reactionary Tango (In Three Parts)” (12:54)
A2. “Copyright Royalties” (6:45)
A3. “Útviklingssang” (6:31)

B1. “Valse Sinistre” (4:56)
B2. “Floater” (5:56)
B3. “Walking Batteriewoman” (4:24)

Trombonist Gary Valente and euphonium player Joe Daley cut across ensemble voicings with split-register lines, flanked by Earl McIntyre’s tuba which underpins and destabilizes harmonic grounding. Steve Swallow drives the lower motion with clean-toned bass guitar lines that reinforce rather than override structural tension. Drummer D. Sharpe outlines the ensemble’s rhythm with pinpointed, often minimal propulsion, holding pace for dynamic and harmonic shifts.

Bley recorded Social Studies at Grog Kill Studio in Willow, New York, between September and December 1980, with engineering by the in-house team and production handled solely by Bley. WATT issued the album in 1981 with ECM overseeing international distribution.

Live!

In 1982, Carla Bley released Live!, a document of her August 19–21, 1981, showcase at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.

Captured over three nights with her expanded ensemble, the album emphasizes Bley’s tightly arranged, theatrically inflected writing in a setting that balances precision with spontaneous inflection. She alternates between organ and glockenspiel, shifting roles between sectional support and framing cues.

Pianist Arturo O’Farrill occupies the central keyboard role, trading harmonic weight with Bley on “Time and Us.” Michael Mantler delivers trumpet phrases that cut diagonally across ensemble lines, often initiating layered response from the middle horns. Alto and soprano saxophonist Steve Slagle and tenor saxophonist Tony Dagradi exchange foreground statements and weave through ensemble tuttis, while French hornist Vincent Chancey acts as harmonic pivot. Trombonist Gary Valente and bass trombonist Earl McIntyre provide structural punctuation, reinforced by McIntyre’s doubling on tuba. Bassist Steve Swallow outlines Bley’s forms with sustained, deliberate phrasing, while drummer D. Sharpe drives the ensemble with marked, rhythmically restrained accents, cueing sectional entrances and shaping dynamic contour.

A1. “Blunt Object” (5:10)
A2. “The Lord Is Listenin’ to Ya, Hallelujah!” (7:24)
A3. “Time and Us” (7:59)

B1. “Still in the Room” (9:06)
B2. “Real Life Hits” (4:26)
B3. “Song Sung Long” (7:30)

The album was recorded live to multitrack during the band’s three-night run at the Great American Music Hall and mixed under Bley’s supervision. WATT issued Live! in 1982 with ECM handling international distribution. No singles were released from the album.

Discography:

Jazz Realities (1966)
Escalator Over the Hill (1971 • Carla Bley & Paul Haines)
Tropic Appetites (1974)
13 & 3/4 (1975 • Michael Mantler & Carla Bley)
Dinner Music (1977)
European Tour 1977 (1978)
Musique mécanique (1979 • The Carla Bley Band)
Social Studies (1981)
Live! (1981)
Mortelle randonnée (OST, 1983)
Heavy Heart (1984)
I Hate to Sing (1984 • The Carla Bley Band)
Night-Glo (1985)
Sextet (1987)
Duets (1988 • Carla Bley & Steve Swallow)
Fleur Carnivore (1989)
The Very Big Carla Bley Band (1991)
Big Band Theory (1993)
Go Together (1993 • Carla Bley & Steve Swallow)
Fancy Chamber Music (1998)
4×4 (2000)
Looking for America (2003)
The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu (2007)
Carla’s Christmas Carols (2009 • Carla Bley, Steve Swallow & The Partyka Brass Quintet)
Trios (2013 • Carla Bley, Andy Sheppard & Steve Swallow)
Andando el tiempo (2016 • Carla Bley / Andy Sheppard / Steve Swallow)