Bley, Carla / Lost Chords, the
Album: Lost Chords, the   Collection:Jazz
Artist:Bley, Carla   Added:Nov 2004
Label:Ecm Records (Jazz)  

A-File Activity
Add Date: 2004-11-22 Pull Date: 2005-01-24 Charts: Jazz
Week Ending: Nov 28
Airplays: 2

Recent Airplay
1. Nov 27, 2004: Morning Glory
Hip Hop
2. Nov 26, 2004: No Cover, No Minimum - "Hi, Mom!"
Wink Leak/Traps/Leonard ...

Album Review
Craig Matsumoto
Reviewed 2004-11-18
As usual with Carla, these compositions keep an easy, conventional jazz sound while playing around with some interesting compositional ideas. The result is a straightfoward session that adds a few twists to what you'd think of as "straight jazz" but doesn't really tap the adventure or abandon of free jazz.

The title suite (tracks 7-9) has a funny story behind it. As a child, Bley had discovered a piece called "The Lost Chord" by Sir Arthur Bliss. "With great excitement I'd played the piece on the piano, hoping to discover a chord that was more beautiful than any I had ever heard," she writes. She was disappointed -- the piece was rather ordinary.

Years later, she was still kicking around the idea of writing something of her own called "Lost Chords," to answer the promise Bliss had left unfulfilled. In 2002 at the last concert of a tour, she started writing out the appropriate, lost-sounding chords ... but lacking anything to write on, she spelled them out letter by letter on the back of a program. Then she LOST THE PROGRAM.

So the chords of the piece truly are "lost." She had to reconstruct the song from memory, and that imperfect replica is all the world will ever get to hear.

1-3 -- Light bop suite based on "3 Blind Mice." Seriously; track 1 uses the theme plain, while track 2 digs in with more jazz sophistication. Track 3 delivers perky bop sounds.

4- Upbeat, soulful jam. Starts with spiky piano.
5- Slow bop with a contemplative piano solo
6- A tangly shuffle, midtempo and happy
7- Delicate, with a stormy soprano sax solo (to the extent that a soprano sax can get "stormy")
8- Bouncy swing, light and happy
9- Grand, stomping reprise of Track 7 chords

Track Listing
1. 3 Blind Mice   5. Tropical Depression
2. Wink Leak/Traps/Leonard ...   6. Red
3. The Maze/Blind Mice Redux   7. Lost Chords 1
4. Hip Hop   8. Lost Chords 2
  9. Lost Chords 3