An Elegy for a Late, Great American Composer
The jazz composer Carla Bley, who died this week, was singularly versatile and playful across a decades-spanning career.
The story of Carla Bley’s life unfolds like a Carla Bley composition: It never goes where you’d expect, but it ultimately coheres in a pleasing, singular way. Bley died on Tuesday at age 87, ending her run as perhaps the greatest living composer, as the bandleader Darcy James Argue recently described her.
The American composer, keyboardist, and arranger started her career in the 1950s as a , selling smokes to patrons at New York jazz clubs. The job and its title both give a sense
