News reaching Afrobeats+ has it that renowned instrumentalist and composer, Carla Bley, has passed following complications related to brain cancer.
According to multiple reports on a myriad of websites, Bley passed away in her home on Tuesday in Willow, a hamlet in upstate New York. She was 87.
The multiple award-winning pianist was born Karen Borg, but changed her name to Carla in 1957. She married jazz pianist Paul Bley that same year and kept his last name even after the couple divorced in 1967, Billboard reports.
Ms. Bley’s influential body of work included delicate chamber miniatures and rugged, blaring fanfares, with a lot of varied terrain in between. She was branded an avant-gardist early in her career, but that term applied more to her slyly subversive attitude than to the formal character of her music, which always maintained a place for tonal harmony and standard rhythm according to The New York Times
Ms. Bley’s portfolio as a leader included a big band stocked with some of the leading musicians in New York; a fusionesque sextet, whose ranks included Larry Willis on acoustic and electric piano and Hiram Bullock on guitar; and a chamberlike trio featuring Mr. Swallow and the saxophonist Andy Sheppard. She was the original conductor and arranger of the Liberation Music Orchestra, the revolutionary-minded ensemble formed by the bassist Charlie Haden in 1969, and continued to lead it in tribute after Mr. Haden’s death in 2014.
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