Creativity Quote by Carla Bley

Carla Bley’s line lands like a deadpan koan for composers: she wants “very lush” chords, then immediately strips out “all the lush parts.” The joke is the point. Lushness usually implies saturation - added tones, warm voicings, harmonic perfume. Bley’s twist suggests she’s chasing the sensation of richness without the obvious ingredients, the way a great arrangement can feel full while using almost nothing.

That intent fits her whole aesthetic as a jazz composer who never trusted grandeur at face value. In big-band writing, “lush” can turn into wallpaper fast, a kind of emotional coercion where the harmony tells you what to feel. Bley’s subtext is resistance: keep the complexity, lose the syrup. She’s describing a preference for chords that imply color rather than broadcast it, voicings that leave air, ambiguity, and a little bite. Think of harmony as negative space - the ear completes the picture.

There’s also a cultural context embedded here: post-bop and late-20th-century jazz were crowded with virtuosity and density, while Bley built worlds out of restraint, odd humor, and clear lines. Her music often treats sentiment like a prop you can rotate under different lights, not a confession you spill. “All the lush parts taken out” is her way of saying: give me the emotional aftertaste without the sugar rush. The result is music that sounds simultaneously generous and unsentimental - warmth with a raised eyebrow.