Play Blue

A rare solo performance by one of jazz's great originals, Canadian pianist Paul Bley, recorded live at the Oslo Jazz Festival in 2008 by Jan Erik Kongshaug and Manfred Eicher. There is nothing else quite like a Paul Bley concert. As the New York Times noted, "Mr. Bley long ago found a way to express his long, elegant, voluminous thoughts in a manner that implies complete autonomy from its given setting but isn't quite free jazz. The music runs on a mixture of deep historical knowledge and its own inviolable principles." Here Bley, encouraged by an attentive and enthusiastic Norwegian audience shapes music in the moment, plays his own compositions, and brings the music to a fine conclusion in a performance of Sonny Rollins's "Pent-Up House".