Escalator over the hill

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Carla Bley's Escalator over the Hill (or EOTH ) is mostly referred to as a jazz opera ; The groundbreaking work was published in spring 1972 with the subtitle "Chronotransduction" with "Words by Paul Haines , adaptation and music by Carla Bley, production and coordination by Michael Mantler ", played by a number of well-known musicians from (free) jazz, rock and Pop , including from the Jazz Composer's Orchestra (JCOA).

In 1997, a live version of Escalator over the Hill was performed for the first time in Cologne , followed by a concert tour. Another performance took place in Essen in May 2006 .

The form: the album

The entire recording is over two hours long and took three years from 1968 to 1971. Steve Gebhardt made a documentary in 1970 about rehearsals for Escalator over the Hill .

The original edition was a box with three long-playing records ( LP ) and an extensive booklet containing the entire text, photos and detailed information on the cast of all pieces. The last of the total of six LP sides ended in an endless groove , so that the last piece … And It's Again merged into an endless hum like a distant swarm of insects that had to be ended by switching off the turntable .

The content: jazz and more

The texts written by Carla Bly's good friend Paul Haines, who lived in India at the time, do not provide a libretto suitable for an opera with a continuous plot , but are rather surreal poetry. It tells a story about the Dadaist life of Ginger, David, Calliope Bill, Jack and many others in a hotel in India.

The many different musicians collectively involved in the original recording act in various combinations (listed below as "chronotransductional") and cover a wide range of musical forms of expression:

Sounds reminiscent of Kurt Weill's theater music , free jazz , rock , world music (even if this term did not exist at the time) - a collage of the most diverse styles of popular music or, as an English-speaking critic put it, “a summary of large parts of the creative energy that existed from 1968 to 1972 ”.

The singers include Warhol film superstar Viva as the narrator, Jack Bruce (also on the electric bass ), Linda Ronstadt , Jeanne Lee , Paul Jones , Carla Bley, Don Preston , Sheila Jordan and Bleys and Mantler's then four-year-old daughter Karen Mantler (today herself a jazz organist).

Track list

01. Hotel Overture - 13:11
02. This Is Here ... 06:02
03. Like Animals 01:21
04th Escalator over the hill 04:57
05. Stay awake 01:31
06th Ginger and David 01:39
07th Song to Anything That Moves 02:22
08th. Eoth theme 00:35
09. Businessmen 05:38
10. Ginger and David Theme 00:57
11. Why 02:19
12. It's Not What You Do 00:17
13. Detective Writer Daughter 03:16
14th Doctor Why 01:28
15th Slow Dance (Transductory Music) 01:50
16. Smalltown agonist 05:24
17th End of head 00:38
18th Over her head 02:38
19th Little Pony Soldier 04:36
20th Oh Say Can You Do? 01:11
21st Holiday in Risk 03:10
22nd Holiday in Risk Theme 00:52
23. AIR (All India Radio) 03:58
24. Rawalpindi Blues 12:44
25th End of Rawalpindi 09:40
26th End of Animals 01:26
27. … And it's again 27:17

Contributors

The roles and their actors

Carla Bley (1978)
Jane Blackstone, Carla Bley, Jonathan Cott, Sharon Freeman , Steve Gebhardt, Tyrus Gerlach, Eileen Hale, Rosalind Hupp, Jack Jeffers, Howard Johnson, Sheila Jordan, Michael Mantler , Timothy Marquand, Nancy Newton, Tod Papageorge, Don Preston, Bill Roughen , Phyllis Schneider, Bob Stewart , Pat Stewart, Viva

Musician (alphabetical)

Musician (chronotransductional)

Orchestra (& Hotel Lobby Band)

  • Carla Bley (piano)
  • Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone)
  • Gato Barbieri (tenor saxophone)
  • Chris Woods (baritone saxophone)
  • Michael Mantler, Enrico Rava (Trumpete)
  • Roswell Rudd, Sam Burtis, Jimmy Knepper (trombone)
  • Jack Jeffers (bass trombone)
  • Bob Carlisle, Sharon Freeman (horn)
  • John Buckingham (tuba)
  • Nancy Newton (viola)
  • Karl Berger (vibraphone)
  • Charlie Haden (bass)
  • Paul Motian (drums)
  • Roger Dawson (congas)
  • Bill Morimando (tubular bells, celesta).

Jack's Traveling Band

  • Carla Bley (organ)
  • John McLaughlin (electric guitar)
  • Jack Bruce (electric bass)
  • Paul Motian (drums)

Desert band

  • Carla Bley (organ)
  • Don Cherry (trumpet)
  • Souren Baronian (clarinet)
  • Leroy Jenkins (violin)
  • Calo Scott (cello)
  • Sam Brown (guitar)
  • Ron McClure (bass)
  • Paul Motian (Darbuka)

Original hotel amateur band

  • Carla Bley (piano)
  • Michael Snow (trumpet)
  • Michael Mantler (valve trombone)
  • Howard Johnson (tuba)
  • Perry Robinson, Peggy Imig (clarinet)
  • Nancy Newton (viola)
  • Richard Youngstein (bass)
  • Paul Motian (drums)

Phantom Music

  • Carla Bley (organ, celesta, tubular bells, steam organ)
  • Michael Mantler (Prepared Piano)
  • Don Preston (Moog synthesizer)

reception

Unlike in the 21st century, where it was not a risk to combine jazz, rock, country, Indian music, hipster lyric and outbreaks of free improvisation in an opera , this was inconceivable in 1970. Thus, John Fordham of The Guardian at the beginning of its assessment determined the album as one of the fifty most important jazz albums. Without financial support or production help from a record company, Bley created the " Sgt.-Pepper album of the new jazz".

For All About Jazz, Trevor MacLaren emphasizes the risk of Bleys to present a triple album under her own name as her debut release. This album is a concept album , but still a typical child of its time, even if the fusion between jazz and rock has not yet been completed. But this work is one of the most unique records that modern music has ever made; it sounds like no other jazz record.

Harry Lachner stated in 2007 about the historical significance of the album: “For the first time, an album presented itself as a pure artifact in the jazz landscape, irradiated by the concept of authenticity; as a daring and fragile concept that rightly shrank from the light of the stage and contented itself with remaining a studio product without any claim to performance. "

Lachner continues: “With this work, jazz has created an artificial space for itself for the first time, and for the first time, a piece of music has gone beyond all the conditions and ideologies, restrictions and misunderstandings that have been cultivated to date. Musically, Escalator over the Hill , which only received its final shape at the editing table, was a monstrosity of creativity: a cut through the world of all kinds of music at a time when the term polystylistic was not yet inflationary, when one was not yet talking about stylistic pluralism or based on postmodern irony. In this musical feverish dream, which no longer dared to follow the old laws of composition and improvisation, which cared as little about the term genre as it did about the laws of the market, rock elements met vaudeville touches, classic Indian touches Music based on the tonal conceptions of contemporary music reflected and broken in jazz and merged beatnik attitude with American everyday surrealisms. "

In 1998 Jürgen Schwab stated for Rondo that Escalator over the Hill “can nowadays be heard as a document of contemporary history”: “An almost limitless musical experimentation and adventure wipes away style and genre boundaries with fascinating carefree - and that long before the term multistylistic became a fashionable catchphrase. "

The Rolling Stone voted the album at number 19 in its 2013 list of The 100 Best Jazz Albums .

Awards

Escalator over the Hill was awarded "Jazz Album of the Year 1972" in a reader survey by the British Melody Maker and in 1973 the French Grand Prix du Disque . For arte it is one of the “recordings of the century of jazz”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Carla Bley Accomplishing Escalator over the Hill
  2. ↑ Martin Hufner "Carla Bleys 'Escalator over the hill' in Munich 1998"
  3. ↑ The music on the magic carpet: Carla Bley and the "Escalator over the Hill" in Essen . Jazz newspaper 7/2006
  4. ↑ Booklet for the album
  5. ↑ Carla Bley and Paul Haines - Escalator Over the Hill ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ cf. Sessionography Escalator over the Hill on jazzdiscography.com (English)
  7. ↑ 50 great moments in jazz: Carla Bley's Escalator Over the Hill . The Guardian, Jan. 18, 2011
  8. ↑ Reassessing Escalator over the Hill
  9. ↑ a b Harry Lachner: Abstraction with feeling . ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Series: "50 Recordings of the Century of Jazz" by arte (February 19, 2007) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  10. ↑ Review by Rondo , Klassik- und Jazz-Magazin, No. 4, 1998
  11. ↑ Rolling Stone: The 100 Best Jazz Albums . Retrieved November 16, 2016.