Cecil Taylor S+D

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.

whenever I get about 10 mins into part 2 of Is It In The Brewing Luminous - I go into hyperbole mode and start thinking this is the greatest piece of art of the whole 20th century.

what happens later

usually someone walks into the kitchen and destroys my reverie with: turn down this shite i'm watching coronation st!

need to add cecil and acker bilk to the olimpo rock poster imo

did cecil have any opinions on does your chewing gum lose it's flavour..? tbh I've got a genuine affection for that one - with it being part of a load of ex-juke 45's that comprised my mum's record collection in my 70's childhood.

for those who are interested friend and musician alex ward has been creating a place to put his ongoing cecil taylor studies:

https://alexwardmusicblog.wordpress.com/

just happen to be listening to the last one Alex mentions: One Too Many Salty Swift And Not Goodbye. It's a reet set!

one too many salty swift and not goodbye on my stereo again... my goodness!

cecil taylor reads a poem (this is the first time i've seen footage of him reading his poems it is way better than looking at them printed on a page) https://t.co/XyzmTHxDQ1

— roland barfs (@rolandbarfs) May 4, 2020

everything about this is great. he has a lovely voice

is it you who put it on youtube ?

There were a bunch of CT spoken word things on ubuweb bitd

Still there! I actually wasn’t sure if ubuweb was still a thing

The scene in the tweet is from a 1981 documentary called Imagine The Sound. In addition to Cecil, it features interviews with, and performances by, Bill Dixon, Archie Shepp, and Paul Bley -- not with each other, as I don't believe any were on speaking terms with one other at the time. I think the film is on a streaming service (Amazon, maybe), not positive, though.

thanks for the context !

think this was posted upthread but it's gone now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_dfetfG6zA

live in paris 1969

the "student studies" 2xLP is a 1966 recording, but the angle / outfit of cecil at the piano in this video look just like the cover art of that release

JUst grabbed Cecil Taylor Unit cos I saw it online.

wondering what is essential by him.

GOt a couple of lps from the mid 60s and probably should have had more. Offcial stuff at least.

i found her cartoon doppelganger

https://i.imgur.com/AWj8YFB.jpg🕸

JUst grabbed Cecil Taylor Unit cos I saw it online.

wondering what is essential by him.

GOt a couple of lps from the mid 60s and probably should have had more. Offcial stuff at least.

Conquistador! is essential. As the FMPs go, you can’t go wrong with the percussion duos. And the orchestra work, Alms/Tiergarten (Spree), was called “the best thing Cecil’s ever done” by Bill Dixon. The recently-released Birdland, Neuburg 2011 (duo with Oxley) is amazing, both musicians confounding expectations at every turn.

it is in the brewing luminous is just so good, his 50's albums like jazz advance, looking ahead! have aged well ... ah too much essential. Even less celebrated albums like student studies, cell walk for celeste, the world of.. just get try the lot Stevo!

Silent Tongues is perfect

My recommended starting points:

• Everything by the 1978 Unit (Cecil Taylor Unit, 3 Phasis, Live in the Black Forest and One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye)
• Solo albums: Indent, Silent Tongues, Air Above Mountains, Garden vols. 1 & 2, The Willisau Concert
• The Feel Trio 2 Ts for a Lovely T box (10 live sets by Taylor, William Parker, and Tony Oxley)
• Conquistador! > Unit Structures, but you need both
• Cecil Taylor/Bill Dixon/Tony Oxley

Oh, and check out Momentum Space, a 1999 trio disc by Taylor, Dewey Redman, and Elvin Jones - often overlooked, but great stuff.

he's the greatest, there is no-one like him!

It might be easier to list the sub-par Cecil records:

- The Hearth, a trio with Evan Parker and Tristan Honsiger. Looks good on paper, but goes nowhere fast, and stays there.

- Algonquin, a duo with Mat Maneri. Maneri’s approach always struck me as too slick, and there’s very little tension or genuine excitement here.

- The Owner Of The Riverbank, a collaboration with the Italian Instabile Orchestra. Competent though these musicians may be, it’s 75 minutes of tentative “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes!” mushiness.

- The Last Dance, a duo with Dominic Duval, one of the more distinguished members of the Unit in latter days. Unfortunately, this was apparently recorded on a phone from the back of the hall. A landline phone.

I remember liking both Algonquin and The Owner of the Riverbank, but I haven't listened to either one in years. There's so little of Taylor's large ensemble work available on CD that every example is valuable, I figure. I wish the 25 piece band I saw him with at the Knitting Factory in 2002 or so had been recorded.

I don’t see it mentioned much but Olu Iwa is maybe my fav - 2 longer live pieces, Peter Brötzmann on the 1st but not obvious most of the time. Winged Serpent also v good & relatively accessible from my POV. What I’ve heard of the 2 T’s box is good but it’s a lot of material

Jazz Advance & Looking Ahead were my way in as a Monk fan who was initially baffled by the later stuff

seconding Momentum Space

not recommended except for curiosity: awkward Coltrane collab floating around under both their names, feat. grumpily straight-ahead Kenny Dorham

I'm intrigued by the early stuff with standards and things being covered.
Guess I probably just need to hear it.
Have heard Fats wallewr being cited either by him or in reference to him. THink he was very aware of the early years of jazz even if it might not be immediately obvious from hearing his stuff initially.

What I’ve heard of the 2 T’s box is good but it’s a lot of material

It's a tremendous set, but for someone just getting into this group (Taylor, William Parker, Tony Oxley), Looking (Berlin Version) The Feel Trio and Celebrated Blazons might be better points of entry.

Also, the entire 2 T's box is, inexplicably, in mono.

yes. I never actually noticed the mono thing but now I’ll always hear it

wrt Taylor’s debt to jazz tradition (ellington another major influence) it’s probably been understated by both supporters & detractors over the years, who’ve tended to attribute his style mostly or entirely to the european avant garde

(therefore a betrayal of tradition to the stanley crouches of jazz - crouch himself repeatedly dismissing taylor as a charlatan/clown whose musical style is entirely a rip off of messiaen, which is so wrongheaded idek- almost certainly motivated by extramusical issues due to crouch’s reactionary sexual politics)

the centrality of dance & poetry to his work is probably also not recognised enough by fans (like me) with little to no understanding of those things