The Lost Chords was founded in 2003 when Carla Bley added her big band drummer Billy Drummond to her established trio of Steve Swallow and Andy Sheppard. Her collaboration with Steve Swallow stretches back over five decades. In 1961, Carla wrote music for the Jimmy Giuffre 3 of which Swallow was bassist. Swallow played on 'A Genuine Tong Funeral', Bley's first extended work recorded in 1967, and has contributed to all of her WATT recordings since 'Musique Mecanique' in 1978. Generally regarded as the most outstanding bass guitarist in jazz history, Swallow continues to win first place in the Electric Bass category of the Down Beat Critics Poll every year. Andy Sheppard is one of the most popular English jazz musicians and one of the very few that American musicians have accepted wholeheartedly. George Russell showcased him in his band for years, and Gil Evans loved his lyrical playing. Billy Drummond is an important figure in the Lost Chords, working sensitively in rhythmic dialogue with Swallow. He's played with many other important jazz musicians including Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, Freddie Hubbard and Steve Kuhn. New man Paolo Fresu is one of the most interesting figures in the new Italian jazz, his clear vibrato-less horn sound sometimes compared with that of Miles Davis. Since graduating from the Cagliari Conservatory in 1984 he's played on some 300 albums. His discs as a leader have received many awards, as has Fresu himself - including the French "Django d'Or" as Best European Musician in 1996. Carla has said that the blending of Fresu's sound with Sheppard's is the raison d'être for the current line-up. It is beautifully explored on the whimsically titled "Banana Quintet", a suite of many moods. Carla Bley herself is one of the great composers of modern jazz: Nat Hentoff has compared her writing with that of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. Underrated as a pianist, Bley's solo style seems to hover between Thelonious Monk and Erik Satie. She appears on 36 albums on WATT and XtraWATT. On ECM she's collaborated with Charlie Haden (The Ballad of the Fallen). Her music, widely recorded, is also featured on ECM albums by Paul Bley, Jimmy Giuffre, Gary Burton, and Susanne Abbuehl.