Jazz has only been a secondary pre-occupation for me over the years and I have realised with regret that only with his death have I come to acknowledge his place properly. I can appreciate his originality on the one solitary track in my collection - Duke Ellington's Azure from 1956, a trio including the also recently deceased Buell Neidlinger on bass.
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I think it was Joachim Berendt who likened the state of modern contemporary jazz in the late 1950s as one waiting for the explosion that was to come in the various shapes of free jazz to happen. My own view is that this was in part down to the opening of new possibilities being perceived by a few, envisaged from discoveries being made possible within an increasingly complex harmonic and rhythmic context, and in part attributable to the shaping of the creative impulse by the situation of unrealised potential among the African American peoples as a whole due to racist discrimination, a creative unleashing born of angry frustration, on top of the complexities of everyday adjusting by all to ever more complex and opaque circumstances of living and adjustment to current realities of the sort that had already erupted into increasingly generalised expression in twentieth century's most radical classical music: complex music evinced by and apposite to a complex age.
In Cecil Taylor's case one already senses the tensions of his already advanced ideas (as Richard has pointed out) in relation to the conventional structures of tunes-based chord-repeat structures and common or 3/4 time regularities that his mind was already thinking beyond and cramped by, in search of another way of working together. Apocryphally (and I have no means or wish to question how accurate the timeline was) this only occurred with the regular associates, minus Neidlinger, who had done a remarkable job, when CT was working at the Café Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1962, as captured on that wild recording which I came by in 1967: the main defining characteristic even before the apparently totally freed structure of "Trance", the opening track, consisting in drummer Sunny Murray's abandoning the timekeeping role hitherto upheld in favour of dialogueing with Cecil's free associative continuities. All this was happening outside America, the significance of which may be deduced or not as the case may be, save to say that Europe had at this time become more than a refuge for a number of, not just free black American players - although there were those who in this Danish environment are said to have chanced their creative arms in some pretty unexpected collaborations at the time, from what I have been told by Britishers who attended there a few years down the road - but lest we forget, to mention that our own Joe Harriott had already, the year before, on his remarkable 1961 release "Abstract", been experimenting with time/no time in London, with his own band of British musicians.Comment
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From the 'One Night with Blue Note' concert in 1985:
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Gary Giddins on Cecil Taylor:
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The current "Atlantic" magazine...
"Taylor divided musicians, too. Critic Gary Giddins recalled seeing Tommy Flanagan, a more traditionally swinging pianist, at a gig and asking whether he planned to cover a Taylor tune. “No, but you can bet I’ll be thinking of them,” Flanagan replied. But Miles Davis walked out of a Taylor gig, and in Ken Burns’s Jazz series, which tended to be dismissive of more outré jazz, Branford Marsalis rejected Taylor’s idea that since musicians prepared for shows, listeners should too: “That’s total self-indulgent bullshit, as far as I’m concerned.”Comment
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Excellent letter in Radio Times(5-11 May 2018) on Cecil Taylor:
"The almost complete BBC news blackout on the death of free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor(save for a miserly tribute on Radio 3's Jazz Now) should really have come as little surprise given the dearth of cutting-edge jazz on the BBC.
Taylor's landmark recordings should have been celebrated as much as the works of any classical composer or rock musician, and I have been reliant on the net to listen to the appropriate tributes."
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I don't think miserly is fair. We pulled a previously finished programme and recut it before broadcast to include a tribute and JRR in two weeks has a tribute - we have to wait for Requests to arrive.Comment
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To be fair to Jazzrook, I think that the coverage of Cecil Taylor's passing on the BBC has been poor and limited entirely to jazz programmes which , as expected, have dealt with the demise of this important musician. I would not class myself as a CT fan but I was quite shocked that the "Arts and Entertainment" section on the BBC news made not mention of his death and there was similarly nothing on BBC TV or the radio news.
I accept that CT was an acquired taste and the whole "avant garde" label puts off many people in the mainstream. If you are in to Adele or Ed Sheeran, Cecil Taylor is unlikely to ever have been on your radar but, in my opinion, this does not mean that the national broadcaster should ignore the demise of one of the 20th century's most important musicians. It is really interesting what the BBC considers newsworthy. The HM Telegraph had an obituary but CT wasn't mentioned on "Last word" on Radio 4. The "arts" section on BBC news seems geared around Radio 1 listeners even of these must now be as much a scarcity as jazz listeners.
The biggest problem with this for me is that "serious" music seems to have been replaced by the superficial in the BBC new teams. I don't think it is fair to criticise the BBC jazz programmes on any oversight in Alyn's defence but I do think that the news team have been very poor in their coverage of this. Cecil Taylor's music is still being assessed and it will take a long, long while for people to assimilate it's implications. I think that the BBC News team need to be more on the ball with their arts coverage as more populist music now seems more genuinely newsworthy than real music. In conclusion, I am with my friend Jazzrook in this one.Comment
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Why does The Andrew Marr Show [sic] always have to conclude with a Radio 1-style pop duo, usually low-budget (do they get paid for re-arranging down for two guitar plus bongos if you're lucky?) - when surely (another) clown on would be more appropriate?Originally posted by Ian Thumwood View Post
So'm I.I am with my friend Jazzrook in this one.Comment
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An illuminating and moving piece in the current WIRE magazine(June 2018) by Val Wilmer on her many encounters with the elusive Cecil Taylor and 'the triple cross he had to bear'. Worth getting for this article alone.
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From a long and quite revealing piece in the current New York Review of Books...
"Cecil Taylor was very proud but also very thin-skinned. Black, gay, and artistically unyielding, he had attracted slights and insults throughout his long career, and he remembered them all. He recalled saying that Lester Young “liked gentlemen” to a fellow musician, only to be told: “I’m not interested in that shit.” After Lyons died in 1986, the drummer Elvin Jones told Taylor, “Well, now that Jimmy’s dead, I guess it’s over for you.” (He and Lyons, who was straight, were never involved romantically.) Once, when we were having dinner, a late 1950s recording by Miles Davis came on the stereo. For many years, Taylor said he could barely listen to Davis, who had insulted his music after nearly but not hiring him for his 1960s quintet (the job went to Herbie Hancock). “But I seem to be enjoying Miles tonight,” he said. “Maybe it’s because you’re here. You’re very easy to talk to.”
Miles considered hiring Cecil Taylor? With the second Quintet? do find THAT pretty unlikely.
BN.Comment
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"Cecil Taylor had a seething hatred for Charles Mingus and Miles Davis calling the latter 'the Mean Devil'.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post
He also recalls seeing Davis spit on the sidewalk as the young Taylor approached to say hello.
I don't accept disrespect from anyone, he hisses, the memory still a thorn in his side 60 years later."
From interview with Phil Freeman in The Wire(April 2016)
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Yep, he (Taylor) called Ornette "the country boy" and deeply resented Coleman getting credit for being seen critically as the free jazz innovator/game changer. Hey ho...
It may be heretical but I think Cecil got about the acknowledgement he deserved and didn't fare too badly, critically and materially, at least in jazz terms. Not the messiah etc...Last edited by BLUESNIK'S REVOX; 18-05-18, 10:14.Comment
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This is a really good article and the YouTube clip with Taylpr playing at Ornette's memorial service is fantastic:-
Not liking either Mingus or Miles is probably not really indicative of someone's personality when both characters were notoriously abrasive. It makes you curious to learn what Taylor thought of Keith Jarrett!! I would also go along with the idea of Ornette being a "country boy" simply because his music is so indebted to the blues. If you can get Charley Patton, it is not too much of a step to get Ornette Coleman. I would also say that Cecil Taylor grew up in an environment that was steeped in an approach more aligned with the conservatoire whereas Ornette only really reached out towards composition / orthodoxy through the auspices of Gunther Schuller.
I have got to say that I feel that Taylor was pretty unique amongst the avant garde players of that generation insofar that he was coming from a more Classical tradition whereas others such as Ayler, Coltrane, Shepp and Coleman arrived through jazz and, in the case of Ayler, was looking backwards to earlier styles of music. Taylor's approach was refracted through a conservatoire approach and maybe should be looked at more akin to Anthony Braxton. Oddly, Braxton and Taylor are the primary jazz musicians from that generation who still sit at odds with the jazz establishment and remain resolutely avant garde. They have never crossed in to the mainstream in the way that Ayler and Coleman have, for example. I am not a massive fan of Taylor nor totally familiar with his music but I would recognise him as probably one of the most important 10 musicians in jazz and probably unrivalled on his instrument from a technical perspective even if I am resolutely a Herbie Hancock fan. Cecil Taylor raised the bar for what could be expected of the piano yet it is a challenge that relatively few have taken up.
I also appreciate that Taylor divided other pianists. I have heard / read adverse comments from the likes of Dick Hyman and Kenny Barron so not all musicians were convinced. It is not simply a matter of pinning the negativity on the coterie of musicians surrounding Wynton Marsalis (I wonder , though, whether he might be coming around to recognising Cecil Taylor's importance.) I think that there are quite a few jazz pianists from the mainstream who acknowledge his importance to the genre.
The other pianist most frequently named in the obituaries to Cecil Taylor is Bill Evans with the former being the latter's most fierce critic. I also understand this because the two pianists are at the polar opposites of the spectrum. It does interest me as a debate because I would tend to side with Evans' harmonic approach being the more appealing solution to tackling the problems presented by the piano as a jazz instrument. However, it is almost a non-starter insofar that Taylor really explored the full potential of the instrument in a fashion that did not interest Evans and which few other pianists previously had been willing to tackle. It is a really interesting argument because the debate operates on so many levels and Taylor just trumps Evans on everyone of them in my opinion even though it initially infuriated me to encounter another musician dismiss Bill Evans so categorically:-
1. Harmony - Evans' model inspired by Chopin / French Impressionism against Taylor's often atonal approach and indebtedness to Duke Ellington. I just feel that Tylor was far more open-minded albeit it is fascinating to contrast Taylor with someone like Herbie Hancock who basically picked up the baton from Evans and ran with it much further.
2. Range of use of the instrument - Evans' almost total exclusion of the bottom and top 1/4 of the piano keyboard to concentrate of those notes in the middle that accentuate the sophistication of his harmony. Taylor embraced every component of the piano including the inside and employed all 88 keys.
3. Evans' reliance on Broadway repertoire and simpler forms versus Taylor's abandonment of form.
4. Timbre / dynamics - Evans worked within a restricted dynamic range, Taylor went for everything.
What is interesting for me is that so much "good" came out of Evans' approach to piano and you can really see him as the turning point at which pianists moved away from Be-bop. The alternative route offered by Cecil Taylor is so radically different and in contrast to Evans you can understand his total rejection of everything Evans stood for. Taylor was extremely condescending about Evans' abilities as a pianist but his standards were extremely high and very few people could attain them. It is often difficult to "love" Taylor's music but is does fascinate and deserves at least equal footing to Miles and clearly surpasses anything Mingus ever produced to take Bluesnik's examples. I think that perhaps he was the messiah despite not being too familiar with his music. Taylor is the apogee of improvised piano playing. It is difficult to make a case for Ornette, Shepp, Ayler, etc, etc being as "advanced " musically as Cecil Taylor and I don't think people will actually understand his music for at least another 20 years. He will be another Herbie Nichols - a player whose approach to music will take ages to assimilate.Comment
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