In the ’50s, Carla Bley dropped out of high school, headed for New York, and took a job as a cigarette girl at the jazz club Birdland so she could soak up the music. At 82, the legendary composer, pianist and NEA Jazz Master still tenaciously pursues beautiful and interesting sound. In an event sure to go down in Dartmouth music history, the all-student Barbary Coast opens with a set of Bley’s unforgettable big-band compositions. Then Bley will take the stage joined by British saxophonist Andy Sheppard and the revered jazz bassist Steve Swallow.

For six-plus decades, Bley has been a pioneer in jazz. Inspired by the work of Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Erik Satie, she first made her mark in the 1960s, penning tunes that were recorded by Gary Burton, Jimmy Giuffre and Charlie Haden. Her landmark 1971 triple album jazz-rock opera Escalator Over the Hill, featuring artists ranging from Linda Ronstadt and Jack Bruce to Gato Barbieri and John McLaughlin, cemented her reputation for stylistic diversity and restless creativity. Later, she and bassist Charlie Haden co-created the seminal Liberation Orchestra, for which she wrote thrilling arrangements. With a remarkable body of work stretching across dozens of albums, Bley was recognized as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2015, one year before turning eighty.