"In the final reckoning,
PAUL BLEY's influence over the
last 50 years of jazz -
and it continues -
will be enormous....
Deeply original and aesthetically agressive,
Mr. Bley long ago found
a way to express
his long, elegant, voluminous thoughts
in a
manner
that implies complete autonomy
from its given setting but isn't quite
free
jazz.
The music runs on a mixture of deep historical knowledge
and
its own inviolable principles."