Cecil Taylor, jazz pianist
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929 – April 5, 2018)
[1][2][3][4] was an American pianist and poet.
[5][6] Taylor was classically trained, and is generally acknowledged as having been one of the pioneers of
free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex improvised sounds which frequently involve
tone clusters and intricate
polyrhythms. His piano technique has been likened to
percussion—referring to the number of keys on a standard piano,
Val Wilmer used the phrase "eighty-eight tuned drums" to describe Taylor's pianism.
[7] He has also been described as "like
Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings".
[8]
Taylor was raised in the
Corona, Queens neighborhood of
New York City.
[9] As an only child to a middle-class family, Taylor's mother encouraged him to play music at an early age. He began playing piano at age six and went on to study at the
New York College of Music and
New England Conservatory. At the New England Conservatory, Taylor majored in composition and arranging. During his time there, he also became familiar with contemporary European art music.
Bartók and
Stockhausen notably influenced his music.
[10]
In 1955, Taylor moved from
Boston to
New York City. He formed a quartet with soprano saxophonist,
Steve Lacy, the bassist
Buell Neidlinger, and drummer
Dennis Charles.
[10]
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Taylor's first recording, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_Advance]Jazz Advance, featured Lacy and was released in 1956.
[11] It is described by
Cook and
Morton in the
Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional
post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms in which the pianist would later immerse himself."
[12] Taylor's Quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957
Newport Jazz Festival which went on to be made into the album
At Newport.
[13] He collaborated with saxophonist
John Coltrane in 1958 (
Stereo Drive, currently available as
Coltrane Time).
[14]
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found Taylor's approach to performance (long pieces) unhelpful in conducting business.
[15] His 1959 LP
Looking Ahead!, showcased his innovation as a creator in comparison to the jazz mainstream. Unlike others at the time, Taylor utilized virtuosic techniques and made swift stylistic shifts from phrase to phrase. These qualities, among others, still remain notable distinctions of Taylor's music today.
[16]
Landmark recordings, like
Unit Structures (1966), also appeared. With 'the Unit', musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay. In the early 1960s, an uncredited
Albert Ayler worked for a time with Taylor, jamming and appearing on at least one recording,
Four, which was unreleased until appearing on the 2004 Albert Ayler box set
Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70).
[17]
By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist
Jimmy Lyons, one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons and drummer
Sunny Murray (and later
Andrew Cyrille) formed the core personnel of The Unit, Taylor's primary group effort until Lyons's premature death in 1986. Lyons's playing, strongly influenced by jazz icon
Charlie Parker, retained a strong blues sensibility and helped keep Taylor's increasingly
avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.
[18]
Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the second half of the sixties. The first known recorded solo performance (by Dutch radio) was 'Carmen With Rings' (59 min.) in De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam on July 1, 1967. Two days before Taylor had played the same composition in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Many of the later concerts were released on album and include
Indent (1973), side one of
Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973),
[19] Silent Tongues (1974),
Garden (1982),
For Olim (1987),
Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989) and
The Tree of Life (1998). He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for
Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and then a
MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.
[20][21][22][23]
Following Lyons's death in 1986 Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with
William Parker (bass) and
Tony Oxley (drums); the group can be heard on
Celebrated Blazons,
Looking (Berlin Version) The Feel Trio and the 10-CD set
2 T's for a Lovely T.
[24][25][26] Compared to his prior small groups with Jimmy Lyons, the Feel Trio had a more abstract approach, tethered less to jazz tradition and more aligned with the ethos of European free improvisation. He also performed with larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in
Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label
FMP, resulting in a boxed set of performances in duet and trio with a large number of European free improvisors, including Oxley,
Derek Bailey,
Evan Parker,
Han Bennink,
Tristan Honsinger,
Louis Moholo and
Paul Lovens. Most of his latter day recordings have been put out on European labels, with the exception of
Momentum Space (a meeting with
Dewey Redman and
Elvin Jones) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998
Library of Congress performance
Algonquin, a duet with violinist
Mat Maneri.
[27] Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, a
Bösendorfer piano that features nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary entitled
All the Notes, was released on DVD in 2006 by director
Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in an earlier
documentary film Imagine the Sound (1981), in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.
[28]
Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continued to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) as well as with other musicians such as
Joe Locke,
Max Roach, and the poet
Amiri Baraka.
[29] In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium 2005 was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz,
[30] and the same in 2009 for the Cecil Taylor Trio at the Highline Ballroom in 2009.
[31] The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and
Jackson Krall. At time of Taylor's death in 2018, an autobiography, further concerts, and other projects were in the works.
[32] In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited edition double
LP titled
Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs, a set of duos with long-time collaborator
Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the
Village Vanguard in New York City.
[33]
In 2013, he was awarded the
Kyoto Prize for Music;
[34] the citation described him as "An Innovative Jazz Musician Who Has Fully Explored the Possibilities of Piano Improvisation".
[35] In 2014, his career and 85th birthday were honored at the
Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia with the tribute concert event "Celebrating Cecil".
[36] In 2016 he received a retrospective at the
Whitney Museum of American Art entitled Open Plan: Cecil Taylor.
[37]
Taylor, along with dancer
Min Tanaka, was the subject of
Amiel Courtin-Wilson's 2016 documentary film
The Silent Eye.
[38]
Taylor was a poet, citing
Robert Duncan,
Charles Olson and
Amiri Baraka as major influences.
[43] He often integrated his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The CD
Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems, accompanying himself on percussion.
[44]
According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and
Ornette Coleman in 1959.
[45] In 1964, Taylor co-founded the
Jazz Composers Guild to enhance the working possibilities of
avant-garde jazz musicians.
[46]
Taylor's style and methods have been described as "
constructivist".
[47] Despite
Scott Yanow's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music" ("Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone"), he goes on to praise Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance", and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision".
[6]
This vision is one of Taylor's greatest influences upon others:
Quote:Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of that I was really chord conscious.
— Archie Shepp, quoted in LeRoi Jones, album liner notes for Four for Trane (Impulse A-71, 1964).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Taylor