Paul Bley Trio - Closer (50th Anniversary Remastered Edition) (1965/2013)

This recording features the legendary trio of pianist Paul Bley, bassist Steve Swallow, and drummer Barry Altschul from near the beginning of Bley's most innovative and creatively fertile period. For ESP-Disk's 50th Anniversary, they have remastered from the original tape.

When Oscar Peterson moved from Montreal to New York in 1949, the 17-year-old Bley took over his residency at the Alberta Lounge on Oscar's recommendation; in his twenties, he played with Charlie Parker. Bley started incorporating maverick pianist Lennie Tristano's approach to improvisation and collaborating with Charles Mingus, and in 1958 in Los Angeles Bley famously put together a band with Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins. His move into free improvisation in the groundbreaking Jimmy Giuffre 3 brought him acclaim. After moving to New York, he was one of the performers at the Cellar Cafe in Bill Dixon's "October Revolution in Jazz" four-day festival, which led to Bley being one of the co-founders shortly thereafter of the Jazz Composers Guild. It was in the midst of that fabled month that Bley recorded his first LP for ESP-Disk' (sixth overall to that point), Barrage.

Bley returned to the studio for his second ESP-Disk' LP a bit less than two months later. Closer finds Bley again heavily featuring then-wife Carla's compositions; she's credited on seven of the ten tracks, including two also heard on Barrage, "Batterie" and "And Now the Queen." They sound quite different on this quieter trio date, and the performances are more concise (no track breaks the 3:30 mark). Paul included one of his own tunes, "Figfoot," as well as Ornette Coleman's "Crossroads" and future wife Annette Peacock's "Cartoon." Closer features the distinctive pianism we've come to associate with Bley in one of its earliest recorded manifestations. The other players are fellow Jimmy Giuffre 3 member Swallow and, in his recording debut, Altschul.

AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
The second ESP issue from the Paul Bley Trio is a contrast as dramatic as rain against sunshine. The earlier album, Barrage, recorded in October of 1964, was full of harsh, diffident extrapolations of sound and fury, perhaps because of its sidemen; Marshall Allen and Dewey Johnson on saxophone and trumpet, respectively, were on loan from Sun Ra and joined Eddie Gomez and Milford Graves. Indeed, the music there felt like one long struggle to survive. On this date, recorded over a year later and released in 1966, Bley's sidemen are two more like-minded experimentalists, drummer Barry Altschul and bassist Steve Swallow. The program of tunes here is also more even-handed and characteristically lush: the entire first side and two on the second were written by Carla Bley (including the gorgeous "Ida Lupino") for a total of seven, and there is one each by pianists Annette Peacock and Ornette Coleman. Bley and his trio understand that with compositions of this nature, full of space and an inherent, interior-pointing lyricism, that pace is everything. And while this set clocks in at just over 29 minutes in length, the playing is so genuine and moving that it doesn't need to be any longer. The interplay between these three (long before Swallow switched to electric bass exclusively) is startling in how tightly woven they are melodically and harmonically. There isn't a sense that one player – other than the volume of Mr. Bley's piano in this crappy mix – stands out from the other two; they are of a piece traveling down this opaque yet warm road together. Bley may never have been as flashy as Cecil Taylor, but he is every bit the innovator.

Tracklist
01. Ida 2:53
02. Start 2:19
03. Closer 3:25
04. Sideways In Mexico 2:53
05. Batterie 3:15
06. And Now The Queen 2:14
07. Figfoot 3:21
08. Crossroads 2:28
09. Violin 2:53
10. Cartoon 2:17