Jazz Pianist Paul Bley Has Died

Paul Bley, the jazz pianist often associated with the free jazz movement, has died, according to a press release from Universal Music. He was 83.

Bley was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1932. A talented pianist, he played with Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Donald Byrd, Art Blakey, Chet Baker, and many others. In the late 1950s, he recorded with free jazz luminaries Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. For several years in the late '50s and early '60s, he was married to fellow jazz composer/artist Carla Bley. 

Paul Bley was among the first jazz pianists to experiment with electronic synthesizers—his album The Paul Bley Synthesizer Show was released in 1971. Bley recorded dozens of albums between the 1950s and the 2000s, for labels such as ESP-Disk and ECM. He also founded his own label, Improvising Artists. His memoir Stopping Time was released in 1999.

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