The
NYC Jazz Record, April 2025
By
John Pietaro
“I grew up on the road”, Karen Mantler explained, “and
people said this is pretty cool, but it was simply normal at the time. My
mother was working and needed to take care of me, so she threw me into the
music.” And so began a “pretty cool” career ensconced in the hippest pool of
new sounds and edge-of-jazz artistry.
Karen Mantler, the daughter of Carla Bley and Michael
Mantler, could have been a historic figure on the basis of Bley’s seminal jazz
opera Escalator Over the Hill, where Mantler, all of four-years-old, was
one of the guest voices enlivening the poetry of Paul Haines, who’d earlier
collaborated with Albert Ayler. Till this day, Mantler views Escalator as
“part of my blood”. In 1997 when Bley finally realized the work as a
performance piece, Mantler served as prime mover, copyist, and organizer of
rehearsals. “We did a tour in the late ‘90s: Carla was conducting, and I played
most of the (keyboard) parts she’d played on the original album. I had many
roles, filling in on whatever was needed”. Mantler added excitedly that The New
School may be producing the full opera this year, with the school’s Jazz
administrator “Coker Keller and I think Arturo O’ Farrill involved”.
Most recently, O’Farrill commissioned a big band
arrangement of Bley’s final composed piece, the presciently entitled “Blue
Palestine” for his Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, released
February 7 (Zoho Records) which includes guests Mantler and Joe Lovano.
Well beyond the pen of Bley, Mantler has been highly
active as a musician in her own right. Her connection to Brooklyn’s Ghost Train
Orchestra, particularly the band’s 2023 album in partnership with the Kronos
Quartet and a bevy of vocalists, Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of
Moondog, includes Mantler on several cuts. “I was asked to sing”, Mantler
explained, “but I never thought of myself as a singer, so I usually insist on
playing harmonica, too”. Mantler began playing harmonica as a child after
receiving a Marine Band as a gift from Bley. “I was kicked out of high school
band because I was subversive”, she happily recalled, “and would sit in the
stairwell by the band room every day, playing this harmonica. But I realized
that I couldn’t hit all the notes, so Mom told me about the chromatic
harmonica, like Stevie Wonder’s. Since then, it’s the only one I play”, Mantler
added.
Raised as a composer by a radical (Bley advised her
daughter to listen to the rhythm and melody within the words to “hear” the
composition as it materializes), Mantler attended the Berklee School of Music
from 1985-87, during which time she secured friendships lasting decades. One
was Eric Mingus and another, bassist Jonathan Sanborn. They founded a band
which included Stephen Bernstein, also studying at Berklee at the same time. Mantler
added: “As we three had famous parents, we jokingly claimed Stephen was the son
of Leonard”. This ensemble would be seen on David Sanborn’s Night Music
television show and recorded several records for the XtraWATT label following
the pianist’s return to New York.
Celebrated producer Hal Wilner was an early champion:
“I met him when I was quite young. Hal was around Carla a lot in the early 80s,
so I can remember him as being youthful and goofy, but then he ended up knowing
everyone”, she said, reminiscing on the relevance of Wilner’s album collections
of the day, his Monk tribute
That’s
the Way That I Feel Now, the Kurt Weill Lost in the Stars
and the album of Disney music Stay Awake, among them.
“Even years later”, Mantler said, “Hal was doing
concerts and put together incredible bands with a lot of famous guests. Some
were not that famous but were lucky enough to be included”, she added, smiling.
“In 2018 he organized a gig of Nino Rota’s music to be performed at Lincoln
Center outdoors, but it was rained out. I had written an arrangement of The
Godfather and my mother did 8 ½”, but this event wouldn’t come to be
until a 2023 concert at Roulette, following Wilner’s sad passing.
Another
important colleague was British vocalist Robert Wyatt, who’d been a leader of
the legendary Canterbury scene and drummer/singer with Soft Machine, Matching
Mole, Centipede and others. Mantler’s keyboards and voice can be heard on
Wyatt’s noted 2003 album, Cuckooland. “I love Robert. I met him long ago
and he was on my father’s albums. I saw him again in 2002 when I curated the
Meltdown Festival in London and he invited me to the studio”, she recalled. “My parents knew all of those Canterbury musicians”,
including John Greeves and Peter Blegved, the latter of which Mantler toured
with as recently as 2022. Mantler’s list of credits also range from work with her
father, to singer-songwriter Robbie Dupree, Woodstock NY folksinger Artie Traum,
to an album with step-father Steve Swallow, a stint with the Golden Palominos “and
I recently did an album, released in February, with Mortelle Randonnee, a
French band who champion Carla’s music”. A noted single, “Ce maudit volcan”
(“That Damn Volcano”), demonstrates the ferocity of composer Karen Mantler, who
also provides the husky, whispery vocal.
However,
it’s within the confines of Mantler’s own trio that she’s been primarily focused:
guitarist/bass clarinetist Doug Weiselman and bassist Kato Hideki have flanked
her on stage for the ten years following the 2014 release of Business is Bad
(XtraWATT) which also brandished “That Damned Volcano”, albeit in a wholly
different guise. The band’s unclassifiable sound only begins with the
genre-berating stylings of Bley. Regardless,
Mantler remains a welcome haunt within the new music sphere though, “I never saw
myself as a serious jazz artist. My early influences were Jack Bruce (featured
on Escalator), Cream, Pink Floyd (whose drummer Nick Mason collaborated
with Bley) and Procol Harum. I’ve always leaned more to rock and roll side”,
Mantler warned with a laugh.
Catch the Karen Mantler Trio
at Barbes April 26 to judge for yourself.
