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Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea (Jimmy Lyons)
by John Sharpe
Alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons was underappreciated even at the height of his powers, but to those with ears attuned to the radical innovations of the loft jazz era, he was a galvanizing presence. That his legacy remains under-lit is due in part to his long-standing tenure in Cecil Taylor's incandescent orbit. Lyons was more than a foil; he was Taylor's most empathetic interlocutor, the tether to bebop logic amid Taylor's eruptive torrents. But a fatal cocktail of perfectionism ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Live at Fat Tuesday's February 10, 1980
by Giuseppe Segala
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 ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit
by Giuseppe Segala
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 ...
Continue ReadingCecil Taylor: Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit
by John Eyles
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 ...
Continue ReadingCecil 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: 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 ...
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