The Kotas Project

Carla Bley was born on May 11, 1936 in Oakland California. Bley was encouraged to learn how to play piano and sing by her father. At 17 Bley moved to New York City and began working as a cigarette girl at Birdland where she met Paul Bley, a jazz pianist. In 1964 she helped organise the Jazz Composers Guild and formed The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra with Michael Mantler. In the late sixties Gary Burton recorded Bley’s A Genuine Tong Funeral. She later arranged and wrote for The Liberation Music Orchestra. Bley is also the composer behind Escalator over the Hill, a jazz opera recorded on the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association’s Label. Bley was awarded the French award Oscar du Disque de Jazz for this composition. In 1972 Bley received a Guggenheim Fellowship and began a record company, named WATT, with Mantler. In 1975 Bley began the Carla BLey Band, a group of six horns and a rhythm section. They recorded five albums together. In 1990 Bley was a visiting professor at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.  In 1997 a live version of Escalator over the Hill was performed for the first time in Germany. In 2015 Bley received the NEA Jazz Masters Award.