And It’s Again: Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill

In January 1967, the jazz composer and pianist Carla Bley (1936–2023) received a poem in the mail from a writer-friend, Paul Haines. As she later said, it “fit mysteriously with a piece of music I was working on, Detective Writer Daughter. When I told [Paul] how amazing this was, we decided to write an opera together, an overstatement by two people who didn’t have to watch their words.” In 1971, the result of this collaboration—the more than two-hour “chronotransduction” (as Bley came to call it) Escalator Over the Hill—was released. Featuring over 50 musicians and 20 vocalists such as Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Roswell Rudd, Gato Barbieri, John McLaughlin, Jack Bruce and Linda Ronstadt, Escalator was named Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1972 and awarded the Grand Prix du Disque the year after that. Included with the LP was a catalogue of pictures of the musicians and recording sessions made by the photographers Tod Papageorge (who also sings on the album), Garry Winogrand and Paul McDonough. McDonough was also responsible for pasting the edited prints to paper boards and arranging the final layout of the catalogue. A selection of those photographs and boards, including design indications and notes, is highlighted in And It’s Again: Carla Bley’s Escalator Over the Hill, along with the composer’s extraordinary narrative-chronicle of the making and recording of the album, Accomplishing Escalator.
Co-produced with ECM Records, Munich