Jazz Articles about Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Leaf Palm Hand

by Brandt Reiter
January 19, 2009

If music criticism is difficult and jazz criticism is most difficult of all (how can any writer capture the essence of a form so elastic and alive?), well, what then to do with Cecil Taylor, the tireless 78-year-old avant-garde piano eminence whose iconoclastic style remains so singular and uncompromising that it defies any attempts at definition, much less explanation? It's enough to make any self-respecting critic retire permanently from the business. Structurally, Taylor's music is essentially motivic ...

Cecil Taylor / William Parker / Masashi Harada: CT: The Dance Project

by Henry Smith
January 8, 2009

Cecil Taylor's involvement in the dance world might be little known to most fans of the prominent pianist. Yet Taylor honed some of his talents by accompanying ballet rehearsals at a young age, and has continued the practice through his work with such dance luminaries as Dianne McIntyre and Mikhail Baryshnikov. With renowned bassist William Parker and Japanese percussionist Masashi Harada--both of whom share Taylor's multidisciplinary approach--the unit creates careful and astute improvisational accompaniment for four dancers on CT: The ...

Historic Quartet: Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton at Royal Festival Hall, London

by John Sharpe
August 1, 2007

Cecil Taylor with William Parker, Tony Oxley and special guest Anthony Braxton Royal Festival Hall London, England July 8, 2007

Given that both Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton have both lasted the course and been almost promiscuous in their wide-ranging associations, it was something of a surprise that they had never played together before Sunday's historic engagement at London's Royal Festival Hall. Neither man should need any introduction to AAJ readers: their groundbreaking ...

Cecil Taylor: Tackling the Ivories

by Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius
December 4, 2006

If you were to take all of the films of noted Japanese director Takashi Miike (who shares my birthday of August 24th, along with Cal Ripken, Jr., Academy Awardâ„¢-winner Marlee Matlin, and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed ancient Pompeii), plus doomed 1919 Black Sox third baseman Buck Weaver's career fielding percentage (.937), in very short order, you'd have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on.Which brings us to Cecil Taylor.It has been ...

Cecil Taylor Unit: The Eighth

by Chris May
October 3, 2006

Half man and half force of nature, pianist Cecil Taylor has made his music a mass of opposites and contradictions. Simultaneously exhausting and liberating, primeval and space age, visceral and intellectually rigorous, it's like nothing that went before it and precious little that came afterward.

As revolutionary a stylist as Charlie Parker and John Coltrane combined, Taylor has, like those two saxophonists, overcome initial incomprehension to take his rightful place as an acknowledged titan of contemporary music. But his total ...

Cecil Taylor Quartet: Incarnation

by Glenn Astarita
May 13, 2006

Recorded live in Berlin in 1999, this quartet outing features longtime Cecil Taylor associate and drummer Andrew Cyrille. But guitarist Franky Douglas' intermittent injections of James Brown-style funk passages provide a curiously interesting curveball of sorts.

The quartet commences the set with a feeling-out process, greasing the pot prior to an onslaught of intertwining call-and-response choruses. And as many of us would surmise, Taylor and his quartet go climactically fast and furious for the jugular. The pianist peppers ...

Cecil Taylor: Almeda

by Russ Musto
July 12, 2005

In the nearly forty years since the recording of Unit Structures, Cecil Taylor has steadfastly developed his orchestral music as arguably the most unique musical expression of one of the (jazz) world's most intelligent and idiosyncratic minds. Recorded during the Total Music Meeting in Berlin on November 2, 1996, Almeda is an honest documentation of a single Taylor “composition for large ensemble.

It begins, as has generally been the case in recent years, with the leader vocalizing, intoning words and ...