Jazz Articles about Cecil Taylor

About Cecil Taylor

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Flashing Spirits

Read "Flashing Spirits" reviewed by James Taylor

by James Taylor
June 11, 2025

There is a gift that keeps on giving nature to jazz music. Whether unearthing previously unknown archival recordings or niche labels getting long overdue vinyl re-pressings, fans of the genre have no shortage of new-to-us releases hitting the market every year. Such is the case with Flashing Spirits, the latest release documenting the prolific partnership of pianist Cecil Taylor and drummer Tony Oxley. Captured live at the 1988 Outside in Festival in Crawley, England, the performance consists of ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Live at Fat Tuesday's February 10, 1980

Read "Live at Fat Tuesday's February 10, 1980" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
June 2, 2025

Nella collana First Visit di ezz-thetics, dedicata a registrazioni storiche rimaste inedite fino a ora, l'etichetta svizzera Hat Hut Records pubblica il terzo CD di Live at Fat Tuesday's, completando così la documentazione degli straordinari concerti che videro impegnato il sestetto Unit di Cecil Taylor a New York dall'8 al 10 febbraio 1980. Come nelle precedenti pubblicazioni, It Is in the Brewing Luminous, uscita nel 1981, e Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit, diffusa nel ...

Book Review

In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor

by Ian Patterson
November 5, 2024

In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil TaylorPhilip Freeman 344 Pages ISBN: # ISBN 978-3-9553-261-9 Wolke Verlag 2024 “The thing that makes jazz so interesting is that each man is his own academy," Cecil Taylor once said, (quoted by Val Wilmer in Jazz People, Da Capo, 1970). The pianist/composer was certainly a school of one, a pianist and composer who occupied a unique position in contemporary music for almost seventy ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit

Read "Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
October 24, 2024

Nel periodo di passaggio tra gli anni Settanta e Ottanta, Cecil Taylor è stato oggetto di numerose attenzioni da parte di etichette europee, che ne hanno lodevolmente documentato esibizioni dal vivo assai significative. Tra queste, alcune presentano la formazione Unit in differenti organici strumentali, che esprimono con dovizia un momento di impeto formidabile e di incredibile intesa creativa. Ne sono esempio le registrazioni in Germania del giugno 1978 Live in the Black Forest e One Too Many Salty Swift and ...

Book Review

In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor

by Jack Kenny
October 2, 2024

In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil TaylorPhilip Freeman 344 Pages ISBN: # ISBN 978-3-9553-261-9 Wolke Verlag 2024 The sign over the nightclub says it all: Cecil Taylor starts where Thelonious Monk leaves off. Jazz has never really come to terms with Cecil Taylor. Comparisons with Bartok, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Berg are misleading. Does Taylor have a direct line to earlier pianists in the jazz tradition? To earlier composers? Is he ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit

Read "Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
June 15, 2024

For some years, Werner X. Uehlinger's Ezz-thetics label has been bringing smiles to the faces of countless lovers of free jazz by re-releasing albums featuring such luminaries as Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Jimmy Giuffre, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor (to name but a few of many) all with state-of-the-art sound quality. The label's distinctive orange lettering over black and white period images of the featured artists has made its albums instantly recognisable. Until now. The current album has blue ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor Unit: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9,1980 First Visit

Read "Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9,1980 First Visit" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
April 30, 2024

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 ...