Carla Bley & Steve Swallow & NDR Bigband: On the Stage in Cages - live in Kiel/ Salzau 2006

Carla Bley, piano
Steve Swallow, bass
Danny Gottlieb, drums
NDR Big Band

recorded live in Kiel/ Salzau, August 2006

1. Appearing Nightly At The Black Orchid, Part 1 (Carla Bley)
Soloists: Carla Bley, p, Steve Swallow, b, Christof Lauer, ts, Nils Landgren, tb, Peter Bolte, as, Danny Gottlieb, dr
2. Los Cocineros (Carla Bley)
Soloists: Fiete Felsch, as; Frank Delle, ts; Nils Landgren, tb; Marcio Doctor, perc
3. Lo Ultimo (Carla Bley)
Soloists: Christof Lauer, ts; Frank Delle, ts; Lutz Büchner, bs; Peter Bolte, as
4. Tijuana Traffic (Carla Bley)
Soloists: Dan Gottshall, tb; Claus Stötter, tp

Post-bop jazz has produced only a few first-rate composers of larger forms; Carla Bley ranks high among them. Bley possesses an unusually wide compositional range; she combines an acquaintance with and love for jazz in all its forms with great talent and originality. Her music is a peculiarly individual type of hyper-modern jazz. Bley is capable of writing music of great drama and profound humor, often within the confines of the same piece. As an instrumentalist, Bley makes a fine composer; she plays piano and/or organ with most of her bands, and while her playing is always quite musical, it's clear that her strengths lie elsewhere. Bley's asymmetrical compositional structures subvert jazz formula to wonderful effect, and her unpredictable melodies are often as catchy as they are obscure. In the tradition of jazz's very finest composers and improvisers, Bley has developed a style of her very own, and the music as a whole is the better for it. (allmusic.com)

Her latest recording "Carla's Christmas Carols" was released in 2008 on Watt.