Cecil Taylor: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts

"On one level you can look at him as one of the grandfathers of the free jazz tradition," says pianist Matthew Shipp of Cecil Taylor in the generous booklet included with Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, a three-LP set released by Elemental Music for Record Store Day 2026 (CD and digital releases will also follow). "But on the other hand...(h)e was very insistent that he came out of a certain tradition, and he talked about Ellington, Monk, and Cecil Taylor." However difficult this link may be to discern for the average listener, Shipp's statement is consistent with the title of the piece essayed here, twice, in the form of a 50-minute evening performance and a 90-minute afternoon performance: "Fragments of a Dedication to Duke Ellington." In the weeks surrounding the Cecil Taylor Unit's November 3, 1969 performance for the 8th Annual Paris Jazz Festival at the Salle Pleyel, the band participated in George Wein's Newport Jazz Festival in Europe on a bill that also included Ellington's orchestra as well as the Miles Davis Quintet. One can wonder whether the dedicatee listened to Taylor's performances on this tour, and, if so, what impression it made on him. What can be assumed is that Ellington's presence helped inspire Taylor to the heights of frenzied, concentrated energy present across the entire two-and-a-half hours of this mammoth set.

The Cecil Taylor Unit included longtime musical partners Jimmy Lyons on alto sax and Andrew Cyrille on drums, with the addition of tenor saxophone giant Sam Rivers. Fragments represents the 2026 fruit of producer Zev Feldman's ongoing relationship with INA (Institut national de l'audiovisual), the French radio and television audiovisual archive, which has produced several albums of great jazz music originally recorded for French broadcast. The audio was restored and mixed from the original analog tapes by Marc Doutrepont at EQuuS, cut for LP by Matthew Lutthans at The Mastering Lab, and presented in a beautiful triple-gatefold sleeve with a full-size booklet. The shorter evening performance is presented first, on LP 1, which makes sense as it is the more concise, better recorded and approachable version of the piece. "Approachable" is a relative term when it comes to Taylor, however.

As always, the pianist composed the piece, and in the film that circulates from the concert Rivers and Lyons are seen to have music on a stand in front of them. Nevertheless, while on the macro scale a pattern emerges (full band, then piano and drums, then Rivers on flute, then piano solo, etc.), on the micro scale the music sounds free. Taylor plays so many notes on the piano with such rapidity that there is a constant flow of trills, glissandos, and clusters, Cyrille engages in constant motion, rarely settling into a repeated beat, and the saxophonists trill, shout, and scream across their full ranges. For the listener, it is perhaps best to let this music flow where it will, listening for the energy, the texture, and the impact that the changes in its character have as the piece progresses.

There are many fascinating episodes. The evening show roars out of the gate, with everyone in full flight. Midway through the piece, the horns drop out, the piano gets quiet and Taylor begins to play more discernible patterns. Cyrille's quiet drumming is sensitive, and the two men engage in a true conversation. After several minutes, Rivers enters on flute and a nearly-lyrical trio section ensues, receiving applause. Then it is back to just Taylor, playing trills that move slowly up and down the keyboard like standing waves. Just as he reaches the top of his range for the final time, the pianist quickly jumps to the piano's low end for a gospel-like chord that, with some snare drum patter, ends the performance.

The much longer afternoon performance is spread across LP 2 and LP 3, and here it is sometimes easier to pick up fragments of Ellington. Taylor plays diatonic filigrees across the piano amidst bluesy interjections by Lyons, who exhibits roots in the tradition of Charlie Parker. The dominant voice here, however, is Rivers, who, as the weave gets thicker with the entry of the drums, begins several minutes of free blasting and screaming through his tenor. A calm episode of solo piano relieves this tension, and soon Rivers engages in some lovely lyrical playing on his flute. But as Lyons enters and builds in his free playing, Rivers begins making vocal moans, wails and, eventually, blood-curdling screams. In person in 1969, this may have come across as a powerful statement of existential or political unrest, but over-modulated on a record decades later, it seems a moment of avant-garde self-parody. Thankfully, it quickly gives way to some wonderful interaction between Cyrille's toms, not a focus until now, and Taylor's trills and chordal statements.

Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts will be self-recommending to serious fans of Taylor's, or Rivers,' monumental musical legacies. The beautifully-presented set captures a quartet of immense power and invention at a time when avant-garde jazz could garner an appreciative mainstream audience alongside that of Ellington and Davis.