On a recent afternoon at the New School, the Tishman Auditorium vibrated with the hum of voices. The sound started so imperceptibly that it took a while to realize that it came from the 10 singers who appeared motionless, lined up in front of microphones.
As the low drone grew louder, individual voices peeled off with microtonal shudders and ululations, and foghorn-like trombone blasts wormed their way through the vocal texture. Eventually, a 20-piece jazz orchestra joined in, forming a vast mushroom cloud of sound.
“Whatever it is can’t have a name,” a spectral voice intoned, “since it makes no difference what you call it.”
The ensemble, made up of students and faculty members, was rehearsing “Escalator Over the Hill” by Carla Bley with lyrics by Paul Haines for a performance on Friday. Remarkably, it will be the staged American premiere of this masterpiece of 1970s experimentalism. In an essay, Bley, who died last year, wrote that the work was conceived as a jazz opera, though “the term ‘opera’ was used loosely from the start, an overstatement by two people who didn’t have to watch their words.”
When a recording was released in 1971, the album cover identified it as a “chronotransduction,” an invented term playing on time and conversion. Whatever it is, “Escalator” became a cult album.
The pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill, who played with Bley and now teaches at the New School, said in an interview that a couple of things might have kept the work from being staged: the composer’s gender and the expense of putting on a work of such ambitious dimensions. With vocal styles spanning classical, pop and experimental rock, it’s a challenge to cast and difficult to fit into a traditional opera house.
O’Farrill said that the hybrid style — the question of what to call it — was confusing to many. “It’s not acceptable jazz to the gatekeepers,” he said. “It’s clearly some sort of monstrous hybrid, something that doesn’t stay quietly in its lane.”
The sprawling work, blending Indian classical traditions, jazz, rock and free improvisation, was recorded over three years with a breathtaking lineup of stars: Jack Bruce from Cream, a not-yet-famous Linda Ronstadt, the saxophonist Gato Barbieri, the guitarist John McLaughlin and the cornetist Don Cherry, known from his work with Ornette Coleman. Bley’s 4-year-old daughter, Karen Mantler, who would grow up to become a jazz pianist and composer, also contributed vocals. In footage from the recording sessions, you can see her stand at a microphone wearing headphones that smother much of her head, eyes fixed in concentration as she interjects “riding uneasily” in one of the early numbers.
Escalator over the Hill
Again no choice
For the poor pale house
Riding uneasily
Over the Hill
In a phone interview, Mantler recalled learning her part by heart as her mother sang the words into her ear. “I had a few lines where I did not understand what it meant,” she said laughing, “although I don’t think anyone did.”
Set at a seedy hotel, “Escalator” unfolds in a kaleidoscope of voices that is closer to Dylan Thomas’s radio play “Under Milk Wood” than to narrative music theater. “It’s surreal,” Mantler said. “It’s like stepping into a series of rooms and each of them is different.”
O’Farrill said that for all the stylistic eclecticism, there is a thematic cohesion to “Escalator” that sets it apart from other jazz works of this scale. “Like all large works, this chronotransduction is architectural, with supporting points and balance points,” he said. “The ‘Hotel Overture,’ for example, is a piece of foundational writing that supports the entire work. We don’t get that a lot in jazz.”
In the 1990s, Bley authorized a new orchestration of “Escalator” by Jeff Friedman and led a handful of live performances across Europe. Mantler, who worked on that project as her mother’s assistant and performed in some of the concerts, said Bley had always wanted to make the work available for performance. “She would have liked to have seen it turned into a theater piece,” Mantler said, “but it required a lot of funding.”
It also requires nerves to take on parts that had been defined by such musical legends. But O’Farrill, who teaches an ensemble class that focuses on Bley’s music, said Bley would never have wanted any musician to emulate another’s performance. “It was never meant to be set in amber,” he said.
“Of course they have big shoes to fill,” he added. “But should they fill them like the people who performed on that record? If Carla were here, she’d be saying: ‘Absolutely not.’ Because the integrity was not in the performance, it was in her writing.”
O’Farrill said that the real challenge in taking on “Escalator” lay in matching the emotional intensity of the recording. “You have to press the crayon harder than you do with most jazz that we’re taught. There’s a gritty aspect to it.”
During a hard-driving passage in the rehearsal, the conductor, Keller Coker, broke off and urged the brass players to bring more wildness to their sound: “You’re playing in a barn. You’re next to the prize bull. Mix it up!” The students repeated the section with rattling intensity and splintered overblown notes from the saxophones. The sound seemed to shudder like a pot about to blow its lid.
“It has to come from your own experience,” O’Farrill said he told his students. “Find your own crucible of pain. That’s where you’re going to find your voice.”