Ran Blake "All That Is Tied"

Ran Blake recorded All That Is Tied, his 35th album, exactly 40 years since cutting his very first solo piano LP for the ESP label in 1965. Marking that anniversary, and his 70th birthday, the master pianist and composer revisits selections from his entire career, bringing new life to an extraordinary and unique body of work.

"All That Is Tied is the most beautiful and challenging piano record of the last 25 years...a masterpiece"
- Brian Morton, WIRE, Jazz Review UK

A cult figure surrounded by the same mysterious aura that permeates the classic Film Noir scenes which so inspire him, pianist/composer/educator Ran Blake has been one of improvised music's most respected and incomparable voices for more than 40 years. His noteworthy collaborators on record have included Anthony Braxton, Clifford Jordan, Steve Lacy, Jeanne Lee, and Houston Person among others, but his seminal solo recordings have always defined his discography and his career. As former student John Medeski (Medeski, Martin & Wood) puts it in the All That Is Tied liner notes, "alone at the piano is how Ran Blake reveals the depth of his musical universe most completely." Critics write that Blake "ranks among the music's most brilliant and engaging improvisers" (Boston Herald), "demonstrates an eloquence of touch and a sense of improvisational design surpassed only by Thelonious Monk" (Philadelphia Inquirer) and "is so hip it hurts...a pianist who can make you laugh at his wry humor one second and wring a tear the next" (DownBeat). The Boston Globe's Fred Kaplan asserts, "There is no pianist alive, except possibly Cecil Taylor, who can elicit so many colors from the keyboard as Ran Blake, and Blake, it should be quickly noted, paints from a broader, more accessible palette."

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