Where the writer felt compelled to use the '/' symbol as a way of creating a break, Bley is not so specific he is not interested in being a celebrated 'technician.' He pushes the line in any way that suits the idea at hand, which in turns suggests others he allows room for its reverberations and trace echoes to inform each following sound, creating song from silence, lyric from air. He pushes a line only as far as the extension of his own 'breath,' as the late poet Charles Olson put it regarding written language. His sense of detail is also his sense of economy on the instrument, which is graceful and elegant, rarely simply 'percussive.' In this manner Bley is a poet of sound. While Bley has recorded other solo albums in the last 35 years, none is more diverse and tender in its sparseness than this one. It's about the investigation of space, and the arrangement of music within it.

This set isn't about flash, nor is it about transcendence. In a little over 55 minutes, he combines melodic and abstract notions of jazz and blues (especially on 'VII' for the latter), ghost traces of popular song from the 1930s to the present, various folk musics, contemporary classical ideas, and reflections on the art of improvisation itself. His range of thought, instinct, and motion is staggering. Bley moves through ten improvisations lasting between two and just under nine minutes each. Recorded in Mondsee, Austria, in 2001, and not issued until Bley's 75th year, these numbered 'Mondsee Variations' were played on a Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano, an instrument that is, like its player, in a class of its own. Buy the album Starting at 16.29€įully 35 years after Open, to Love, Paul Bley's seminal solo piano recording for ECM (which stands as a watermark both in his own career and in the history of the label - i.e., unconsciously aiding Manfred Eicher in establishing its 'sound'), the pianist returns to the label for another go at it on Solo in Mondsee.

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