Paul Bley
Improvisie

"I fully take responsibility for what I'm about to say" (a phrase quite popular these days among commentators, journalists, and politicians in the upscale forums of that piece of crap we call TV, almost as if recently in this country there is a certain fear in saying what one really thinks): for me, Paul Bley remains the most important pianist (keyboardist) of the world’s free jazz as much as Earl "Bud" Powell was for American be-bop. I admire him as much for his youthful and tortuous path in searching for the perfect union between melodic structure and Indian inspiration, as for the period spanning the '50s and '60s during which he particularly served as a pianist for Charlie Mingus, Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Giuffré, and especially for the pieces written by his wife Carla Bley.

But the now ninety-year-old Paul Bley is much more than a simple jazz pianist; he is the living proof (indeed the living emblem) that free jazz was not solely the prerogative of black artists, at least as far as the birth of the genre is concerned. It can indeed be calmly stated that Bley, Canadian by birth and American by adoption, was doing free jazz even before the term was coined. Always opposing the musical, ethnic, and ethical values of traditional jazz, he has slowly contaminated the beautiful melodies with a skillful blend of exotic rhythms and experimentation of all sorts. Here I connect to the album in question; after the separation from Carla Borg he artistically links with Annette Peacock and begins a prolific collaboration reserved mainly for live performances, almost entirely abandoning the tender melodic poetry of previous solo works to venture into musical territories on the edge of the avant-garde. "Improvisie" remains to posterity as the most concrete testimony of his "development in progress", initiated with jazz à la Oscar Peterson and culminating in shows for electronic keyboards and synthesizers.

"Improvisie" was first released in 1972 and contains two suites ("Improvisie" and "Touching") recorded live in Rotterdam on March 26 of the previous year; alongside Paul (electric piano and Moog modular synthesizer), Annette Peacock on the same instruments plus voice, and percussionist Han Bennink. The album is extremely evocative, the recording impeccably perfect even though it is live, thanks also to a stereophonic capture which expands the atmospheric horizon to the full advantage of a sound experiment that deserves to be carefully analyzed by the listener. The musicians’ intent was not to create mere cacophonies to be pawned off as an intellectual exercise; the approach to the electronic instrument by the keyboardist was advised by Peacock herself from the start of their collaboration (listen to the album "Dual Unity" in this regard) and for very specific purposes. We are facing an important document, a revolution in the way of crafting jazz free from form constraints—even though it's true that Sun Ra and others had already been working with the synthesizer for years, but always in a lavish context where the large ensemble slightly expanded to make room for the new arrival, the synthetic medium indeed. Bley and Peacock give totally free rein to electronics, the grand piano is overshadowed by the warm sound of the Fender Rhodes and the chaotic improvisations that were previously the absolute prerogative of saxophonists are now executed through primitive electronic circuits generating sounds as fascinating as they are psychedelic. The two, constantly swapping between piano and synthesizer, create a set of floating notes and effects accompanied by percussion in a commendable interplay for the creation of essentially instrumental pieces, even though on a couple of occasions Peacock’s voice finds space among Bley’s solos; she sings intensely in an almost catatonic manner, vaguely reminiscent of Patty Waters in her less orgasmic moments.

The album only suffers from the lack of a double bass, perhaps also the acoustic piano would have warmed the souls of purists of the genre; these are the two instruments that tied to electronics contributed to the success of the Dual Unity album recorded just a year earlier, however in "Improvisie" the idea behind the Bley-Peacock duo is more clearly visible, that of having the machine do the dirty work, the one that years prior was practiced by jazz soloists, those who would have totally garnered the general acclaim of listeners. These too often forgot that in free jazz, there never was and never can be the figure of the soloist as each performer is always a soloist of themselves.