Paul Bley was born November 10, 1932, in Montreal, Quebec, and began studying music at age five, starting on violin before switching to piano at seven. One of the few Canadian jazz musicians of his generation to achieve international recognition, he worked early in his career with Charlie Parker and Lester Young before becoming a pioneer of free jazz and the avant-garde across a seven-decade career.

His groundbreaking piano trios, most notably with bassist Gary Peacock, whose own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile, and drummer Paul Motian, liberated the rhythm section from its traditional supporting role, treating bass and drums as equal improvising voices rather than mere accompaniment. Beginning in the 1960s he moved further into free jazz and became an early adopter of electronic music, performing on the Moog synthesizer, and became an important influence on younger musicians including Keith Jarrett and Bill Frisell.

Bley released more than 100 albums across labels including EmArcy, Savoy, ESP-Disk', Polydor, ECM, Improvising Artists, SteepleChase, Justin Time, Soul Note, and Hat Hut. He died January 3, 2016, in Stuart, Florida, at age 83.

Bley's trio work with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian fundamentally reimagined the jazz piano trio as a democratic, three-way improvising unit, a model that directly shaped how Keith Jarrett and countless later trios would approach the format, while his embrace of electronic instruments made him one of jazz's earliest crossover figures into the world of synthesizers.