Cecil Taylor S+D

Wow, that's excellent - hey, from what I've seen, Vimeo is the place people put their documentaries when they'd rather monetize through rental; there's a huge selection. That might be the place for you to put it up

I'm not sure but I may be the only person on earth who has listened to all of 2 Ts in one go (yesterday). Towards the end I felt like I was on some sort of mystical sweat lodge mushroom trip

Damn, there useta be a cool half-hour doc made for French TV documenting the late 1966 "Student Studies" quartet, but it's apparently taken down from YT in the past few months.

I should've worded that differently. I'll send you a WeTransfer link once ripped. If it's not available on YT or Vimeo that's probably the filmmaker's decision and I'm not gonna ignore that.

Aiet - thanks again

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/25/obituaries/buell-neidlinger-dies.html

Rest In Peace

Happy belated birthday CT

No official confirmation yet but word's going around Cecil's passed

Aw man. I was lucky to see him play up close maybe twelve years ago, an experience that will stay with me forever.

True Fire.

He passed earlier this evening, at home in Fort Greene.

I saw him play five times:

• in trio with Dominic Duval on bass and Jay Rosen on drums at the Village Vanguard in 1997
• leading a two-dozen-strong orchestra at the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street in 2002
• at Avery Fisher Hall, also in 2002 (half solo, half trio with Duval and Rosen again)
• in trio with Henry Grimes on bass and Pheeroan akLaff on drums at the Iridium in 2006
• at the Whitney Museum in 2016 with Okkyung Lee on cello, Harri Sjöström on sax, Jackson Krall on drums, and Tony Oxley on electronics

RIP

just last night picked up a copy of Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) - I will blast it today

(re above release i had no idea he'd crossed paths with Tomasz Stanko)

saw him play in a trio with tony oxley and bill dixon in london maybe 10-15 years ago, it was a weird show but CT's solo section was outstanding

I love the album that Oxley/Dixon trio recorded at the Victoriaville Festival in Canada - I believe it was their debut performance, and it was much more Bill's show than Cecil's. The music was super spacious and drifting. It's the only time I've ever heard Taylor surrender to someone else's aesthetic so completely.

only time i saw cecil taylor was in london at the jazz cafe in about 1991. can't for the life of me remember who he played with, though i guess oxley is a fairly likely candidate

a giant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqNf6OCHn9E

Lots of Cecil coming down on the WFMU Give the Drummer Radio stream right now.

Never got to see him play. But man, what a genius.

RIP - talk about a guy who blazed an entirely new trail.

The following panel discussion occurred 54 years ago today. Cecil was part of a "Jazz Weekend" at Bennington College (this was four years before Bill Dixon's arrival there, and seven or eight years prior to Dixon's establishing of the college's Black Music Division). Panelists include Cecil, arranger Hall Overton, and Bennington composition teacher Lou Calabro. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) is in the audience, as is Bernard Malamud.

https://bit.ly/2IyGtBu

His playing was so visceral and thrilling, hearing Cecil pounding out a thundering cluster of notes is one of the greatest things in the world.

man cecil

may your free spirit remain in free jazz

A couple of 10 second excerpts of his music on the BBC radio obit doesn't seem adequate, playing the entire side 1 of Air Above Mountains would have been a more fitting for such a star.

*tribute

I think about the first thing I heard about him was an NME article from the start of teh 80s that had a bit talking about I think John Coltrane having picked up a new piano that needed to be worn in or something. From what I remember it was located in his bedroom and he asked Cecil to play it, then sat on the bed dodging piano keys as they flew past him because Cecil played so hard.

I was also knocked out by hearing that he was a chess hustler since being able to think strategically that far ahead etc seems phenomenal.

I like his mid 60s stuff. Need to hear a lot more of his recordings though.

I was blasting out some of his 50's stuff that I hadn't listened to much previously this morning. Jazz Advance is an absolute classic, and with a young Steve Lacy in the band as well.

I think about the first thing I heard about him was an NME article from the start of teh 80s that had a bit talking about I think John Coltrane having picked up a new piano that needed to be worn in or something. From what I remember it was located in his bedroom and he asked Cecil to play it, then sat on the bed dodging piano keys as they flew past him because Cecil played so hard.

This was Sunny Murray, actually; I was just reading this story in Valerie Wilmer's As Serious as Your Life, which is an amazing book and highly recommended.

I was also knocked out by hearing that he was a chess hustler since being able to think strategically that far ahead etc seems phenomenal.

It was Anthony Braxton who was a chess hustler for many years in New York. Cecil had some real crap jobs in the early 60s; he was a dishwasher in jazz clubs that wouldn't hire him to play.

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2018/04/eagle-god-turned-trickster-gremlin/

Although not a posthumous tribute, I liked this a lot.

"By temperament, Taylor had chosen ‘Out’ before Ayler, Coltrane or even Coleman, playing ‘free’ years before this became the term for the play, his example encouraging each of them to take similar steps."

I wrote something for The Wire.

Fenway organ, 1st inning: I assume that all @MLB organists are paying tribute to #CecilTaylor this weekend. I went with the intro to "Rick Kick Shaw" from his 1956 debut album "Jazz Advance," recorded right here in Boston.

— Josh Kantor (@jtkantor) April 7, 2018

Saw him on the festival circuit in 2002, lotsa heavies in the crowd soaking in the 88 tuned drums.

Nice piece Phil

I love this recording, one of his first (THE first?) collaboration with Sunny Murray...all three of these musicians dead within the last few months...too bad about the amateurish visuals

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNJYe2tuUu4

yes, nice

I've been playing my boxset of 2 Ts for a Lovely T. what an amazing recording

WMSE had a nice 3 hour show celebrating Taylor. The 4/08/18 show:

https://www.wmse.org/archives/?time=64800

In Cecil Taylor's honor, @EMPACnews is *giving away* copies of 'Solo | Duo | Poetry,' 2008 DVD featuring Cecil performing with the great Pauline Oliveros. DVD also includes 78-minute focus on Taylor's poetry. You pay only 0 shipping. https://t.co/cMREGoGDNO

— Steve Smith (@nightafternight) April 10, 2018

$10 for, should say

I love Cecil as an artist and as a human being. And miss his presence already. This world just gets sadder and duller all the time. But what i mostly came to say is My God, he is expensive to collect! All the really important, "must have" stuff by him is just insanely expensive. I don't know, i guess i'll just have to keep downloading them instead.

I kee[ thinking that artist's deaths lead to reissue campaigns but not sure how true that is. Would be good if it was though.

All the really important, "must have" stuff by him is just insanely expensive.

Some of his career highlights (for me) are still pretty cheap and easy to find: Unit Structures, Conquistador!, the aforementioned trio with Bill Dixon and Tony Oxley on Victo. But yeah, his vast output on FMP is either not-exactly-cheap (around $30), crazy overpriced ($150 for The Hearth, a trio with Evan Parker and Tristan Honsinger), or just impossible to find.

I have really got into the unrelenting brilliance of his Feel Trio album with Oxley and Parker. Fuck, it is amazing.

I can't put my finger on what it is I like about Parker's contribution to this awesome recording, but I love any band with him in it.

The writer knew Cecil a bit so there are some good, reflective quotes from Taylor's past relationships with various people in the artistic Black community he was part of, and fought with.

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/16/the-world-of-cecil-taylor/

Yeah, that's a beautiful piece.

It's funny, Taylor has a habit of viciously (and sometimes hilariously) shit-talking people he'd been friends and/or collaborators with for years, or sometimes decades, but no one's ever said, "Then why did you continue to work with them?" or "Then why did you make four albums and go on tour with that musician who couldn't grasp your music?"

Shatz also did a rather wonderful piece on Mal Waldron in The Nation last year.

My favorite nickname he had for a fellow pianist he wasn't too fond of (this was when I was assisting on a documentary about him) was "Herbulous Hunchback"

lol!

If I ever fully transcribe our "interview"/"conversation" for The Wire, I feel like I should subdivide it into categories:

- Cecil shit-talks his former collaborators (Bill Dixon and Ronald Shannon Jackson were the two who got hit hardest)
- Cecil shit-talks other musicians (Miles Davis was the clear winner here, though Keith Jarrett and the Rolling Stones came up too)
- Cecil praises other musicians, all of whom are dead (Billie Holiday, Horace Silver, Max Roach, Jimmy Lyons)

I just picked up the double of Cecil’s concert with Mary Lou Williams. I’d never heard of it, but now I’m reading it’s regarded as a disaster... but how bad could it be?

One weird thing about that record is the slap-back echo effect on Cecil's channel. Weirdly, for the most part, it works.

I love the record, and it's fascinating to hear each player edge towards each other's approach, however minimally or briefly. For some reason, though, whoever set the thing up did so not realizing that Cecil Taylor is gonna do what Cecil Taylor does. That was apparently a source of tension for Williams and (especially) her rhythm section.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/16/the-world-of-cecil-taylor/

As we ate, a procession of admirers and hangers-on stopped by our table to pay their respects. One was a tall West Indian man in a homemade white turban who called himself The Captain, and seemed to know Taylor well. I asked him what sort of work he did. “I do a variety of things,” he replied.

nice Shatz piece written shortly after his death. Blasting out Conquistador whilst reading it felt good!

Yeah, definitely one of the better pieces on Cecil. And my friend/collaborator trumpeter Arthur Brooks is in the photo from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw (far left, back to camera). Brooks and Frank Wright (far right, seated at the piano) were chosen by Cecil to be the co-lead soloists on an orchestra piece, and Brooks rehearsed the band. George Lewis and (I think) Anthony Braxton were also part of this group.