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Cecil Taylor Unit: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9,1980 First Visit
by Chris May
More faux-intellectual codswallop has been written about Cecil Taylor than about any other jazz musician, dead or alive. He has been, and continues to be, misrepresented as an arcane Einsteinian theorist by a cult whose members are afraid of visceral reactions to his art (or to anyone else's). But Taylor's work demands a visceral response. It has nothing to do with rational thought and everything to do with emotion and physicality. Sadly, the nonsense that has been written about his ...
Continue ReadingAlbert Ayler: More Lost Performances Revisited
by Chris May
A state-of-the-art sonic restoration of obscure but historically important Albert Ayler material by Switzerland's ezz-thetics label, which with its parent label, Hat Hut, has been creating an audiophile archive of Ayler recordings with the support of his estate since 1978. All too often, “more" in an album title means “Beware: barrel scraping in progress." Not in this case. More Lost Performances Revisited is primetime Ayler. The disc draws from three sources over a five-year timespan. The earliest ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor, Ellington Seattle Concert, Aretha Franklin
by David Brown
This week on the Jazz Continuum, we celebrate the birthday of Aretha Franklin with her music and Franklin covers by Philly organist Jimmy McGriff. We'll continue with a musical tribute to Cecil Taylor, one of the most uncompromisingly gifted pianists in jazz history who was born on this day in 1929. We'll be spinning from Taylor's discography, both early works and key, influential recordings. Then, we'll visit the Duke Ellington orchestra performing in Seattle, on this day in 1952, when ...
Continue ReadingMomentum Space
by Dan McClenaghan
Momentum Space was released in 1999 on Verve Records. Considering the players--saxophonist Dewey Redman, pianist Cecil Taylor and drummer Elvin Jones--the album didn't make much of a splash. Reviews were mixed, leaning toward the dismissive. Taylor was 70 at the time. Jones was in his early 70s and saxman Redman was in his late 60s. Taylor was widely considered a genius of free jazz, or a madman who was going out there on the bandstand and jiving us--the ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: With (Exit) To Student Studies Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Documenting the evolution of Cecil Taylor is an undertaking that is way beyond the pay grade of most listeners. Just as in the study of homo sapiens (yes, us) where there is no critical moment (the missing link) that we can definitely pinpoint where our ancestors established language, art and importantly, abstract thought, Taylor's music can be thought of in similar terms. Obviously his approach didn't emerge fully formed. Or did it? No, that is an irrational thought, but a ...
Continue ReadingTown Hall: Satchmo to Cecil
by David Brown
I picked up a Blue Note box set titled One Night with Blue Note Preserved. It contains a concert presented at Town Hall, NYC in February of 1985 which relaunched the historic label after years of dormancy. Tonight, in addition to selections from this concert—Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner and others—we'll explore other live recordings from Town Hall. Artists include: Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, Ornette Coleman, Bill Evans, Sara Vaughn, Cecil Taylor and others. Playlist ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert
by Mike Jurkovic
If the title alone The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert doesn't blow out those flu-like post-holiday cobwebs in a big hurry, the full, near ninety minute assault on all that was and is holy damn well will. Couple the jittery anticipation of NYC's Town Hall audience pushing up against the cool onstage élan of alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, percussionist Andrew Cyrille and bassist Sirone aka Norris Jones and the air in the hall is highly, nervously charged, all of them ...
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