Carla Bley

“Beal’s prose is often lyrical and always dynamic, she instantly finds the appropriate pacing for the narrative and, just as quickly, demonstrates deep knowledge of and affection for her subject.”--Popmatters

"Amy C. Beal responds with alacrity and intellectual force to the challenge of contextualizing the work of this uniquely important, yet academically underexplored twentieth-century American composer-performer. An important and salutary work that greatly enriches the field of jazz studies."

--George E. Lewis, author of A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music

"Accurate and kind, Carla Bley reveals with remarkable effectiveness the anatomy of the successive moments of Bley's musical life."--Clarin "Excellent."--New Yorker "Beal ... expertly contextualizes Bley's career within the landscapes of emergent avant-garde, free jazz, and experimental music while also exploring her creative relationships with the legendary Steve Swallow, Charlie Haden, and others. . . . Readers and researchers interested in women composers, American music history, music theory, or jazz from 1950 to the present will find this book invaluable."--Library Journal “Beal could have easily written a biography three or four times longer than the present volume. But it would be a mistake to consider Carla Bley something of a half-loaf, as it is more than enough to set the record straight.”--The Wire “Carla Bley is a marvel of concision, packing biography, musicology and cogent, descriptive analysis of her major work in barely 100 pages.”--Shepherd Express

"An intelligent and sensitive compositional history of Carla Bley's music. Amy C. Beal honors Bley's famous humor and autodidactism without compromising a serious analysis of Bley's compositions over a very long and distinguished career."--Sherrie Tucker, coeditor of Big Ears: Listening for Gender in Jazz Studies