2016 · Album
Andando el tiempo
Recorded 2016 · ECM · Personnel: [Carla Bley] (piano, compositions), [Andy Sheppard] (tenor saxophone), [Steve Swallow] (bass guitar)
Three Voices, Decades Deep, Still Finding New Ground
Chamberlike and willowy, suffused with melancholy, it reflects her sly noncompliance with jazz and classical conventions.
Andy Sheppard's tenor saxophone is the first thing you notice on Andando el Tiempo — warm, conversational, never rushing. Sheppard and Carla Bley have been playing together for decades, and that history sits underneath every phrase here. He doesn't compete with her composing or her piano lines; instead he moves around them like he knows exactly where the empty spaces are. On the title track, a three-part meditation on addiction and recovery, his tone becomes almost vocal, vulnerable in a way that matches what Bley is asking the music to say.
This is Bley's first album of entirely new material in eight years, and it matters that she made it with these two people. Steve Swallow on bass completes the picture — understated, precise, holding everything together without drawing attention. The three of them have recorded together before, but this feels like a conversation that's finally become fully itself. Jazz Journal and The Irish Times both gave it four stars, and even AllMusic, which rated it 3½ stars, recognized that "it's that shared intensity, born out of the trio's decades-long partnership" that makes it work.
Sheppard's willingness to play small in service of Bley's uncompromising compositions is what distinguishes this record. Many reviewers compared it to the trio's previous release and found this one more personal, more succinct. It's chamber music that happens to use jazz instruments, which is exactly what Bley has been circling around her whole career. Sheppard's presence says yes to that vision completely.
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More by Carla Bley
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The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
