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Musician

Cecil Taylor

Born:

"One of my wishes has been realized. I found love. It was difficult, but I found it. Because when Billy Holiday sang, 'You don‘t know what love is,' great singers will tell you… it‘s a partnership. It‘s a sharing." —Cecil Taylor

"Practice, to be studious at the instrument, as well as looking at a bridge, or dancing, or writing a poem, or reading, or attempting to make your home more beautiful. What goes into an improvisation is what goes into one's preparation, then allowing the prepared senses to execute at the highest level devoid of psychological or logical interference. You ask, without logic, where does the form come from? It seems something that may be forgotten is that as we begin our day and proceed through it there is a form in existence that we create out of, that the day and night itself is for. And what we choose to vary in the daily routine provides in itself the fresh building blocks to construct a living form which is easily translated into a specific act of making a musical composition." - Cecil Taylor

Album

Flashing Spirits

Label: Burning Ambulance Music
Released: 2025
Track listing: Flashing Spirits; Encore 1; Encore 2 (Stone).

20

Article: Opinion

Deconstructing Free Jazz

Read "Deconstructing Free Jazz" reviewed by Robert J. Lewis


In the continuously evolving history of artistic expression, certain movements emerge that challenge the very foundations of our aesthetic sensibilities. In the early and mid-20th century, Expressionism and free jazz were two audacious musics that not only broke all the rules but broke the spirit of many well-intentioned listeners. If the terms are not ...

15

Article: Album Review

Aruán Ortiz: Créole Renaissance

Read "Créole Renaissance" reviewed by Jack Kenny


Cuban Cubism is central to Aruán Ortiz's musical identity--but in this album, his vision extends far beyond. While the 1930s Negritude movement was a literary endeavor, Ortiz seeks to embody that movement not through words but through music. His compositions channel their spirit with abstraction, tension, and a deep sense of diasporic reflection. Ortiz, ...

4

Article: Album Review

Karen Borca / Paul Murphy: Entwined

Read "Entwined" reviewed by John Sharpe


Entwined pairs pioneering bassoonist Karen Borca with drummer Paul Murphy in an unadorned duet setting. It arrives hot on the heels of her leadership debut Good News Blues (NoBusiness, 2024). While the latter comprised archival concert tapes of sets from the 1998 and 2005 Vision Festivals, the former is an undated studio session which presents both ...

16

Article: Play This!

Remembering Sheila Jordan: Sheila's Blues

Read "Remembering Sheila Jordan: Sheila's Blues" reviewed by Ian Patterson


NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, who passed away on August 11, 2025, at the age of 96, will be remembered as one of the great improvising jazz vocalists--imitated by many, bettered by none. Born in Detroit in 1928, Jordan's life-long love affair with jazz began in the 1940s when she heard Charlie Parker. “After ...

7

Article: Album Review

Potsa Lotsa XL: Amoeba's Dance

Read "Amoeba's Dance" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Like an amoeba, whose shape-shifting properties enable it to adapt to its surroundings, Silke Eberhard's Potsa Lotsa expands and contracts according to its needs. Originating as a four-horn ensemble inspired by the music of multi-instrumentalist/composer Eric Dolphy, Potsa Lotsa blasted off with Potsa Lotsa: The Complete Works Of Eric Dolphy (Jazzwerkstatt, 2010). An auspicious debut, Eberhard's ...

9

Article: Album Review

Olie Brice Quartet: All It Was

Read "All It Was" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Bassist Olie Brice wears the title of Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside with remarkable ease. Equally adept in free improvisation and structured composition, Brice moves fluidly between extremes. His work with improvisers such as Tobias Delius and Mark Sanders on Somersaults (Two Rivers, 2015), or with Paul Dunmall on The Laughing Stone (Confront, 2023), exemplifie his outside approach. ...

13

Article: Album Review

Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea (Jimmy Lyons)

Read "Live From Studio Rivbea (Jimmy Lyons)" reviewed 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 ...

8

Article: Album Review

Misha Mengelberg / Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects Of Confucius

Read "The Analects Of Confucius" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Come for the music of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg, and stay for Sabu Toyozumi. Or perhaps you are here for the Japanese drummer--the first non-American invited into the ranks of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)--and are thrilled to hear him engage in a distinctly Japanese take on the New Dutch Swing. Either ...


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