Cecil Taylor S+D

you can check this out if you're looking for a print source rather than video:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/ceciltaylor.html

both Miles and Cecil were poshboys compared to Monk who was an autodidact born into struggle and struggled even when he was famous, and there is a fair bit of needle between Monk and Miles. Probably not all down to class resentment but more pride and the clashing out of control egos. But no surprise that Cecil was an urbane intellectual type, given his background. Not that it made life any easier being black in the US at the time.

But no surprise that Cecil was an urbane intellectual type, given his background. Not that it made life any easier being black in the US at the time.

Yeah, I deal with this a little bit in the book, the fact (often unremarked-upon by critics) that Taylor was absolutely a scion of the early 20th century Black upper middle class, if not the Black aristocracy of the era; he says in an interview I quoted that his father had the only brick house on their block, and his (Cecil's) name appeared in the society columns of local newspapers when he was a kid — the family seems to have come through the Great Depression entirely unscathed, and some relatives on his father's side lived in a gigantic manor house near Boston (part of the reason he wound up at New England Conservatory, I think).

I just realized despite the fact I love him so much I have no idea about Taylor’s background. Looking forward to the book, etc.

most of what i know is from the A.B. Spellman book, which i highly recommend!

https://press.umich.edu/Books/F/Four-Jazz-Lives2

thanks budo jeru! i think his intro in the doc was more interesting, if only because he took me by surprise when he referred to bridges as a time-based form

stumbled onto this a while ago and most of what i know about him is from here:
https://unitstructures.commons.gc.cuny.edu/abstracts/

no problem. i don't get asked every day if i can recommend a print source for Cecil Taylor's thoughts on Calatrava, but when it does happen i'm ready

haha, does the Institute of Jazz Studies need a reference librarian?

Yeah, thanks for that link budo jeru.

of tangential interest: this blog posted an audio recording of an interview with chantal d'arcy from 1963, who started Shandar records in Paris in the early '70s with encouragement from CT, and also issued recordings by Taylor, as well as Sun Ra, Terry Riley, Pran Nath, and others:

https://blogthehum.com/2017/04/02/a-rare-wonderful-and-insightful-interview-with-chantal-darcy-founder-of-shandar-records-from-may-23-1973/