Jazz Articles about Cecil Taylor

About Cecil Taylor

Album Review

Cecil Taylor Orchestra Humane: At Iridium 2004

Read "At Iridium 2004" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
July 14, 2026

At Iridium 2004 is a vast work. Cecil Taylor also leaves behind similarly vast territories of sound: the 10-disc Feel Trio recordings 2 Ts For A Lovely T (Codanza Records, 1995) or the monumental In Berlin '88 box (FMP, 1989). Within jazz, his music stands like a monolith--challenging and imposing. Cecil Taylor Orchestra Humane's At Iridium 2004 continues the tradition. Taylor's hallmark intensity remained undiminished at the Iridium residency. Contemporary accounts suggest that these performances functioned less as ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts

Read "Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 12, 2026

Another insanely good Record Store Day release from Elemental Music, Fragments, The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, is available as a limited-edition, 180-gram, 3-LP gatefold set or as your standard 2-CD version, but truth be told and told plainly, any version will serve one well. Talk about rumble in the jungle. Fragments, The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts pushes at you like a gang fight on the 49-minute “Fragments of a Dedication to Duke Ellington Evening Set Version." ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts

Read "Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
May 2, 2026

Hosting a recording by Cecil Taylor represents a new departure for producer Zev Feldman. He is candid about the challenge: “Words fail me to describe the great genius of Cecil Taylor and I could never do him justice, but luckily we have Phil Freeman's erudite words." Freeman contributes a substantial essay to the release. Even after fifty years, Taylor's music remains dense, unrelenting, forceful, and challenging. Time has not diminished its impact. The glorious vivacity is undimmed.

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts

Read "Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts" reviewed by Joshua Weiner

by Joshua Weiner
April 26, 2026

"On one level you can look at him as one of the grandfathers of the free jazz tradition," says pianist Matthew Shipp of Cecil Taylor in the generous booklet included with Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, a three-LP set released by Elemental Music for Record Store Day 2026 (CD and digital releases will also follow). “But on the other hand...(h)e was very insistent that he came out of a certain tradition, and he talked about Ellington, Monk, and ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor Unit: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts

Read "Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
April 18, 2026

Cecil Taylor, a pioneer of free jazz, pared down his Cecil Taylor Unit ensemble for a trip through Europe to partake in a 15-date tour in late 1969, in support of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Miles Davis Quintet. This foray was billed as the Newport Jazz Festival In Europe. Taylor's Unit of the day--Taylor on piano, Sam Rivers on reeds, Jimmy Lyons on alto sax and Andrew Cyrille in the drummer's chair--sounded nothing like the elegance and swing ...

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...and in three months' time, Cecil Taylor freed jazz

by Daniel Mège
February 14, 2026

In the 1950s, while jazz explored its coolness far out west, Cecil Taylor, freshly back from Boston, took up the Thelonious Monkian revolution in New York City. Three years younger (1929) than John Coltrane and Miles Davis, he launched two kids, Archie Vernon Shepp (1936) and Steven Norman Lackritz (1934)--better known as Steve Lacy--whom he drew from dixieland. Then he fired them because they could not keep up. Taylor's compositions at that time were complex objects with spikes distantly sharpened ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Flashing Spirits

Read "Flashing Spirits" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
June 28, 2025

Jazz never did know how to deal with Cecil Taylor. Does it now? Here is a session from Burning Ambulance from the Outside In Festival in Crawley Sussex recorded on 3rd September 1988. Cecil Taylor was fresh from his sojourn in Berlin where he created an important series of recordings and started working with Tony Oxley, a relationship that proved to be pivotal for both men. The album is issued in conjunction with Leo Feigin who ...