Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley: Cecil Taylor/Bill Di...

237

Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley: Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley

By

View read count
Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley: Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley
I have a confession to make. One night at the Hotel Colibri in Victoriaville, Quebec, after a resoundingly disdained set by Cecil Taylor, Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley, I rode up in the elevator with Oxley and Victo festival promoter Michel Levasseur. My room was on the first floor, but I wanted to hear what they had to say.

At best, most people I spoke to called the set a disappointment. The trio went on over an hour late and played a short (by Victo standards) set. The performance seemed lackluster, perhaps weighed down by Dixon's floundering trumpet and electronics. There was none of Taylor's trademark waves of energy and there seemed to be little communication between the players.

On the elevator ride, Levasseur was silent, but after Taylor's late arrival at the fest two years ago, forcing a last-minute rescheduling of the final night's program, he might have been less than elated. But Oxley was encouraging. When you go back and listen to the tape, he said, you'll see there was a lot going on there.

OK, so I'll admit it. Oxley was right and we were wrong. As evidenced by this release of the set, the music played that night was intimate, even delicate. It still seems that Dixon didn't quite sit down at the table with his mates, and his electronic effects don't do him any favors, but credit seems due to him for keeping the set at an unusual slow burn. There aren't the displays of pyrotechnics evidenced in Taylor and Oxley's duo performances. Instead, piano and drums dance lightly around the trumpet's background wash, creating a music both sparse and dense. The titles, mathematical formulas comprised from the player's initials, offer little guidance for deciphering this perplexing, pastoral set. "B+T+C" seems evident, and "T=CxB" could be speculated upon, but the closing, 81-second piano solo carries the title "CxBxT+T", forcing me to abandon any hope of gaining understanding.

Ultimately, the disc is an important chapter in Taylor's extensive, challenging discography. Do all Cecil Taylor CDs sound the same? Well, no. But how they differ, with the exception of instrumentation, is hard to pin down. But here is a different, and beautiful, mood from the master.


This review first appeared in the October 2002 issue of All About Jazz: New York .

Personnel

Cecil Taylor: piano, Bill Dixon: trumpet; Tony Oxley: drums.

Album information

Title: Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley | Year Released: 2002 | Record Label: Victo

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.