"I avoid the trap of easy definition." Cecil Percival Taylor (1929–2018)

April 6, 2018 9:50 AM

free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and Ornette Coleman in 1959 and while it didn't end yesterday, it took a deep breath and sighed and hung its head in sorrow. A magnificent ten-minute taste of what is lost.
posted by cgc373 (26 comments total)

For languagehat.
posted by cgc373 at 9:52 AM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

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posted by Cash4Lead at 10:02 AM on April 6, 2018

One of the best and most interesting pianists to have ever lived.

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posted by Lutoslawski at 10:03 AM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

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posted by the sobsister at 10:03 AM on April 6, 2018

It took me years to appreciate Taylor (I remember with embarrassment an argument I got into with a CT fan in the Village, when I was sure he was overrated by people who valued their own hipness too much), but when I did I ran out and got a couple dozen CDs; I'm glad I was able to see him live while I was still in the city. When I learned the news this morning, I put on my copy of Nefertiti, the Beautiful One Has Come (the beautiful Revenant reissue) and let the softly descending chords at the end of "D Trad, That's What" serve as a momentary epitaph. Thanks for this post.
posted by languagehat at 10:53 AM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

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posted by treepour at 11:05 AM on April 6, 2018

"The recognition of birth is the slap. Which is the downbeat."--Cecil Taylor in Musician magazine, 1990

One of my favorite jazz musicians. I figured he wasn't in good health--he was astonishingly prolific until the early 2000s, but slowed way down around that time. Still, though, he was one of the last OG free jazz people standing (RIP Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Sunny Murray...), and it feels a little like the end of an era.

Cecil Taylor is a very polarizing figure in jazz--most people either love him or hate him. Okay, to be honest, most people hate him.

Here's one of the most traditional things he ever recorded: 1959's 'Love for Sale' (for compare/contrast, here's Miles Davis' version from 'Kind of Blue').

From 1962's 'Nefertiti The Beautiful One Has Come,' here's 'Lena.' From 1963, here's 'Four,' which features saxophonist Albert Ayler. From 1966, 'Student Studies.' And, from 'Unit Structures,' that same year, here's 'Steps.'

From 1973, here's 'Air Above Mountains' for solo piano. 1976 trio, 'Dark to Themselves.'

Small group from 1980, 'It is in the Brewing Luminous.' 1981, free improv from the documentary 'Imagine the Sound.'
1983, large group, from 'Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants),' 'Taht.' 1986, Germany, with Peter Brotzmann and Frank Wright guesting: 'B Ee Ba Nganga Ban'a Eee!'

1990, improvised duo with percussionist Tony Oxley for German TV. 1995, live with percussionists Rashid Bakr and Thurman Barker. 1998, another trio (with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones), from 'Momentum Space': 'Nine.'

Interview from 2006, Message from 2013 (upon receiving the Kyoto Prize).

Matthew Shipp, himself an amazing jazz pianist, listed a few of his favorite Taylor albums. Here's his list:

looking ahead
love for sale
the world of cecil taylor
Nefertiti the beautiful one has come
unit structures
conquistador
silent tongues
air above mountains
indent
into the hot-- gil evans

Finally, WKCR is doing a memorial broadcast.

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posted by box at 11:35 AM on April 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

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posted by Smart Dalek at 11:51 AM on April 6, 2018

Was lucky enough to see him a couple times at Mills College and Yoshi's in Oakland. My collection includes the above-mentioned It is in the Brewing Luminous, the 1962 live in Copenhagen Trance, the no-piano, all poetry/percussion Chinampas (ubuweb audio link) and the era-spanning duo piano record with Mary Lou Williams (article on their conflictual Carnegie Hall concert including a letter from Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter (Previously) about it.)

Here's an article on the time Cecil Taylor almost played with Tiny Tim by Dave Frishberg
posted by larrybob at 12:10 PM on April 6, 2018

(How did I make that comment without mentioning Berlin in 1988?)
posted by box at 12:23 PM on April 6, 2018

> Finally, WKCR is doing a memorial broadcast.

Listening now, thanks!
posted by languagehat at 12:39 PM on April 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

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posted by From Bklyn at 12:48 PM on April 6, 2018

Here's a nice account of coming to appreciate CT:

Nefertiti, which documents a concert in Montmart[r]e from 1962,was the recording that opened Cecil’s genius to me. It showcased Taylor’s genius at a crucial stage. He was working in a trio with two very sympathetic musicians, saxophonist Jimmy Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray. Murray’s didn’t drum in a traditional time keeping sort of way; instead his rhythms rumbled and erupted with fascinating unpredictability. Lyons was clearly of a lineage of alto saxophonists that ran through Bird, Jackie McLean and others, but his acerbic tone had a quality that easily abstracted without losing its emotional verve. This was the perfect frame for Cecil. His fleet right hand was all abstraction and beauty, flashy predecessors like Oscar Peterson or Art Tatum yanked into a dissonant modernity. His left hand kept the music so grounded in an elegant tradition that it seemed like a Cole Porter cover might happen at any moment (in fact the band plays the Bobby Haggart nugget, “What’s New” during the show). The recording made Cecil’s unique vernacular clear to me.

The lone disappointing aspect of the recording is that it stands so alone in the Taylor discography. In the early ’60s, musicians entered the studio almost monthly, but not Taylor. He recorded a few discs in the late ’50s and 1960. Nefertiti is his only document until Unit Structures and Conquistador four years later, by which time his ensemble language had taken another turn.

posted by languagehat at 12:48 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

it stands so alone in the Taylor discography

The Complete Candid Recordings is from right before Nefertiti, and, viewed as a companion piece, it makes it much clearer how Taylor got from Love for Sale and Looking Ahead to Unit Structures and Conquistador.
posted by box at 1:30 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ben Ratliff (NYT) has an obit. He quotes A.B. Spellman's 'Four Lives in the Bebop Business':

“There is only one musician who has, by general agreement even among those who have disliked his music, been able to incorporate all that he wants to take from classical and modern Western composition into his own distinctly individual kind of blues without in the least compromising those blues, and that is Cecil Taylor, a kind of Bartok in reverse.”

And ends with a quote from Taylor himself:

“What I am doing,” he said in 1994, “is creating a language. A different American language.”

posted by box at 2:50 PM on April 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

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...most people either love him or hate him.

I never particularly loved or hated him, but he certainly was mesmerizing. Only got to see him live one time, at a solo concert (September 1975) in the sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

... it seemed like a Cole Porter cover might happen at any moment...

The double-album Blue Note reissue In Transition (also 1975), includes a number of Taylor’s Cole Porter interpretations, as does YouTube: in addition to Love For Sale, mentioned above, there’s I Love Paris and You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To.
posted by LeLiLo at 2:57 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Jimmy Carter has a question for Cecil Taylor after a White House concert. (Date is probably off because Carter was inaugurated in January 1977.)
posted by larrybob at 5:06 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I saw him live, around 1975, at Gilly's, in Dayton.The drummer was positioned at the front of the stage, and the sax man frequently stepped to the side of the stage for frantic cigarette breaks. Taylor was brilliant. I can understand why he was a polarizing figure. He had his own approach to the piano. And he owned his music, body and soul.
posted by kozad at 7:50 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

•••••/••••
posted by bz at 9:51 PM on April 6, 2018

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posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 10:54 PM on April 6, 2018

He's one of those artists I never really followed, though when the more interesting people I know suggested certain works I always listened and was always fascinated. It happens, sometimes. My gosh he was something else, and I think what he did will loom larger and larger as times pass.
And, once again to Metafilter folks for providing such amazing links in this thread; I seem to be in a place these days where I need to hear the most radical music out there.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 2:08 AM on April 7, 2018

Watching Ken Burns allow Branford Marsalis to dismiss Cecil Taylor's music as "bullshit" - and not give Taylor time to respond to the slur - during the PBS Jazz series in 2000 soured me on Ken Burns permanently.

I didn't always enjoy Taylor's later recordings, many of which still strike my naive ears as excessive, but Unit Structures changed how I thought about music, for sure, and his early free jazz work remains a perfect entry point for folks looking to explore the style.

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posted by mediareport at 3:18 AM on April 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

My friend the jazz bassist informs me that Taylor’s long-time bassist Buell Neidlinger also has died, a few weeks ago at age 82. The two musicians appeared on at least a half-dozen records together, including New York City R&B (1961), with an octet that included Archie Shepp, Clark Terry, Roswell Rudd, Steve Lacy, Charles Davis, and Billy Higgins. (Their version of Things Ain't What They Used to Be.)

Interesting as it would have been to hear Taylor perform with Tiny Tim (who when I interviewed him years ago was completely serious, and well as quite charming, when discussing his music), Neidlinger actually did record with a wide variety of non-jazzmen including Frank Zappa, Leo Kottke, Duane Eddy, Elvis Costello, Roy Orbison, and Ringo Starr, and in 1983 led a band playing progressive country versions of compositions by Ellington and Monk, a kind of music Neidlinger termed ‘Buellgrass.’
posted by LeLiLo at 9:57 PM on April 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Goddammit, the KCR memorial broadcast is over. They did two days (Friday and Sunday, interrupted by the Billie Holiday broadcast on Saturday)—two days for one of the great jazzmen of all time! What's happened to KCR? They used to do at least a week for anyone of that stature. Anyway, they played some great stuff, and I got an interesting factoid from one of Phil Schaap's interminable self-aggrandizing ramblings: he was driving CT home from a gig at the studio, but as soon as they pulled out of the Columbia parking lot Taylor announced that Duke Ellington's "Conga Brava" was the greatest jazz tune ever recorded and he wasn't going anywhere until he heard it. What to do? The musical portion of the broadcast day was over, and they'd already started doing the news, so he couldn't have them play it for Taylor. But he ran into the studio, found a tape with the tune, found a tape player, ran back to the car, and played it, and Taylor was satisfied and they could drive on.

So of course I had to get out my Ellington and play the cut, and damn if that piano in the first few seconds isn't the closest thing to CT you're going to find in the swing era!
posted by languagehat at 8:35 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

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posted by koucha at 10:14 AM on April 9, 2018

How did I miss this???? I just found out about Taylor's death via Chrysostom' Liz Phair FPP. Such sad news.


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posted by Thorzdad at 5:30 AM on April 29, 2018