Paul Bley: Canadian pianist who played with Parker, Rollins and Coleman and made huge contributions to modern jazz

By the time of Bley's death last Sunday, there were a hundred recordings in his discography, as well as numerous collaborative sessions

Bley: drawn to the radical openness of free jazz (AP)

In 1985, Paul Bley told a British journalist that he no longer listened to anyone else's records, only to his own. By that time, the Canadian-born pianist had made – despite a half-decade's break from the studio at the end of the previous decade – more than 30 albums as leader.

His apparent diffidence about others' work was perhaps explained by a CV which included playing engagements with some of the leading figures in jazz, including the saxophonists Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Giuffre and Ornette Coleman. He didn't need to listen to their commercial releases, because he had been at their side when some of their most innovative work was done.

By the time of Bley's death last Sunday, there were a hundred recordings in his discography, as well as numerous collaborative sessions. They represent the most radical examination of jazz piano undertaken by any comparable figure. Though less widely venerated and a less obviously romantic/tragic figure than Bill Evans, Bley arguably made the more substantial contribution to the piano literature, whether in trio or solo contexts; and while he never entirely abandoned the keyboard's fundamental harmonic role, as Cecil Taylor did in his famous redefinition of the piano as "88 tuned drums", Bley explored the new timbral possibilities of electric and electronic instruments before returning in later life to a highly distinctive piano style poised between traditionalism and the avant-garde.

Hyman Paul Bley was born in Montreal on 10 November 1932. He was delighted to learn that he was almost exactly the same age as radio sci-fi hero Buck Rogers, whose adventures were first broadcast that week. "I guess we both like to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat," Bley said in an interview. "That's the essence of a jazz life".

The young Bley was raised by adoptive parents. His mother was a Romanian immigrant; his father ran an embroidery factory, which Bley also wryly adduced as an influence on his future music. He began studying piano at the age of five and formed his own group at the age of 13, but rejected the "prodigy" label.

He formed a jazz workshop in his native city and persuaded Parker, the icon of the bebop movement, to perform with him. Bley also performed with older figures such as Ben Webster ("I learned a lot just by hearing the way he phrased") and Lester Young. He also deputised at the Alberta Lounge for his somewhat older compatriot Oscar Peterson – and the fact that he could stand in for such a superb technician speaks volumes for his own pianism.

Bley was increasingly drawn to the radical openness of free jazz. He attracted the attention of bassist and composer Charles Mingus, who employed Bley as a conductor and musical director and later gave the pianist an opportunity to record on his Debut label: Introducing Paul Bley was released in 1953 and established an oblique and uncompromising approach to melody.

That quality alone had guaranteed common understanding with a young Texan named Ornette Coleman, whom Bley met on the West Coast. He hired Coleman, along with trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins for an engagement at the Hillcrest Club in Los Angeles that represents a genuinely important moment in modern jazz. Coleman, who died in June 2015, went on to make a controversial contribution to contemporary music, but the fundamentals of his style, which combined radical and roots elements in equal measure, were forged with Bley.

In the early 1960s, Bley also worked with Sonny Rollins, another Janus-faced explorer, and with the saxophonist/clarinettist Jimmy Giuffre. The trio he formed with Giuffre and bassist Steve Swallow was scarcely viable as a working unit, so understated was the music, but is now hailed as a significant step towards the thoughtful "chamber jazz" of more recent times.

Bley was briefly married to Carla Borg, who he met at the Birdland jazz club in New York, where she worked as a cigarette girl. As Carla Bley she became a significant composer and performer, contributing substantially to Paul's repertoire. His 1964 LP, Barrage, consisted entirely of her work.

From 1964, both were involved in New York with the Jazz Composers Guild, a co-operative committed to new directions in improvised music. Bley also enjoyed a similar yin/yang relationship with the pianist Annette Peacock, whom he married in 1966, and whose songs "Touching", "Both", "Cartoon" and "Mister Joy" were key elements in Bley's work in the late 1960s. At the end of the decade he began to experiment with Moog synthesizers and toured with Peacock as the Bley-Peacock Synthesizer Show.

Along with the film-maker and videographer Carol Goss, who was also to be his life-partner for the next 43 years, Bley founded the Improvising Artists label, putting out work by Giuffre, bassist Gary Peacock (Annette's first husband) and rising stars Pat Metheny and Jaco Pastorius. His own emphasis had shifted back almost exclusively to the conventional piano keyboard, albeit with then-unusual techniques – such as playing directly on the strings.

After a hiatus in the late 1970s, he embarked on a prodigious three-decade career as a recording artist, creating a body of work that essentially worked through the implications of all he had learned from bebop, from free and electronic music, and from an approach to melody that remained utterly distinctive to the end. He taught for a time at the New England Conservatory of Music, but preferred to maintain an acerbic creative independence and remoteness from schools or styles. The anagrammatic Play Blue: Oslo Concert was recorded in 2008 but released in 2014, a late masterpiece on the ECM label.

Bley died at home on 3 January. He is survived by his wife, Carol, their daughters, Vanessa and Angelica, two grandchildren, and by another daughter, Solo Peacock.

Paul Bley, pianist: born Montreal, Canada 10 November 1932; married first 1957 Carla Borg (divorced), second 1966 Annette Peacock (divorced, one daughter), third 1980 Carol Goss (two daughters); died Stuart, Florida 3 January 2016.