‘Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley’
Steve Cardenas, Ben Allison, and Ted Nash

Composer and pianist Carla Bley is generally associated with the avant-garde or free jazz movement. This might only be due to the process of elimination, as her music doesn’t sound like bebop, swing, or even dixieland, and the term “postmodern jazz” is traditionally, like the Republican Party, a big tent. 

She rarely plays standard tunes or even well-known chord changes. In fact, she almost never makes any of the obvious choices, yet every time I listen to one of her albums I find myself surprised by how accessible it is. 

Ms. Bley’s music is full of melody, rhythm, and energy — she writes tunes that are memorable, and much appreciated by other musicians. If she gets slotted into the so-called avant-garde category, it’s primarily because her music doesn’t sound like anyone else’s.

Ms. Bley, who is now 86, gifted us with her most recent album, “Life Goes On,” in 2019. Now, there’s a new collection of her compositions titled “Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley,” and it’s by guitarist Steve Cardenas, bassist Ben Allison, and a multiple reed player, Ted Nash. The trio launched the album this week with two sets at Birdland.

The connections between Ms. Bley and the three men here run deep, starting with Mr. Cardenas having played with Ms. Bley in several different ensembles. The three are also linked to Ms. Bley through the late Jimmy Giuffre, a remarkable musician and composer whose purview stretched from the big band era to free jazz.  

As a West Coast freelance saxophonist, Giuffre occasionally crossed paths in the studios with Mr. Nash’s father, Dick Nash, a living legend of the jazz trombone at 95, and his uncle, “Big Ted” Nash, a major West Coast tenor champ. Giuffre, who at the time employed Ms. Bley’s husband, pianist Paul Bley, in his trio, was among the first established musicians to encourage Ms. Bley and to perform her work.  

The most famous edition of Giuffre’s trio featured reeds, bass, and guitar, and thus was a direct inspiration for the Cardenas-Allison-Nash group. It makes perfect sense that this threesome’s first album, “Quiet Revolution” (2015), was a celebration of Giuffre’s music. It’s equally logical that their latest should be this Carla Bley songbook.

In the brief notes to the new album, the musicians relay the following: “After listening to ‘Healing Power’ intently for several minutes, Carla, as is her custom, condensed a paragraph of response into two words: ‘That’s me.’” 

This is a telling response, given that Ms. Bley’s music is so many different things, often at the same time. Indeed it is her, but it’s a very specific aspect. Overall, the trio’s approach makes her tunes sound like what we used to call “chamber jazz,” at least of the variety played around 1960 by the Modern Jazz Quartet and, yes, the Giuffre Trio. 

“Ictus,” recorded by Giuffre in 1961, is one of her earliest and best-known compositions; there have been at least 40 different recordings, though none by Ms. Bley herself. Clearly influenced by musical theorist George Russell, “Ictus” sounds more obviously like free or avant-garde jazz. On the Giuffre version, it’s hard to follow the tune; it sounds deliberately random, explosive, chaotic. The Cardenas trio, however, brings the melody more clearly into focus, tames it, and keeps it under control.

“King Korn” is a vintage 1963 original with a tenor lineage in that Ms. Bley originally wrote for Sonny Rollins, who apparently never played it, though it was recorded by John Gilmore as part of Paul Bley’s quartet. At Birdland, Mr. Nash’s solo — as well as his body English — reminded me of another Sonny acolyte, Lew Tabackin.  

Unbelievably, “King Korn” is based on much-altered changes of “I Got Rhythm,” but you have to listen pretty hard to hear them; they’re a bit more evident on a 1999 duo performance by Ms. Bley and her longtime partner, bassist Steve Swallow (on the album “Are We There Yet?”), wherein she quotes briefly from Gershwin’s tune in the coda.  

At Birdland, Mr. Nash stretched out on the tenor on this one, and at times his solo sounded like “Giant Steps” being played backward. On the album, the track is much shorter and more to the point, and features a provocative chase between Messrs. Cardenas and Nash, this time on clarinet.

“Lawns,” from Ms. Bley’s 1977 album “Sextet,” is one of her most evocative pieces; the slow tempo and languorous mood suggest relaxing on a lawn or in a backyard on a summer evening when it’s just too hot to even move. The original featured both Ms. Bley on piano and guitarist Hiram Bullock, while the new trio version has Mr. Cardenas assuming both of those parts before Mr. Nash enters on tenor, playing very slowly and deliberately, sustaining the tranquil mood. As Mr. Nash announced on stage at Birdland, the track has become a hit on Apple Music as part of the “Jazz Chill” playlist, racking up close to a million streams.

Both the new album and the show concluded with the title song, “Healing Power,” also from Ms. Bley’s “Sextet” album. This is a rare example of a Bley composition in an overtly recognizable form, being a very earthy blues. Ms. Bley’s version is aggressively funky; the new trio treatment is more laid back and even, as they say, chill.

This is hardly the first Carla Bley songbook album; the German guitarist Rüdiger Krause released one in 2015, and Paul Bley himself also did so in 1992. Yet this is a superb addition to her legacy, further helping to illustrate that if there’s one thing that the music of Carla Bley proves, it’s that the unpredictable isn’t always the unlistenable.