Cecil Taylor: Memories and Some Resources

 

Six years after his death, I find myself listening to Cecil Taylor as much as I ever have. I was lucky enough to see him several times. The first time was one of the greatest concerts of my life: the Unit at Blues Alley in Washington DC in 1980, for two sets of incredibly dense and unrelenting energy. Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, William Parker, Rashid Bakr. Blues Alley was a fairly small club, with no stage, and our table (me and my brother and our bemused but patient girlfriends) was directly in front, right in front of Cecil. The piano was angled so we could see his fingers and the piano keys from the angle of his right shoulder. This was almost too much to bear; I get chills thinking about it even now.

Afterwards we were lucky enough to talk to both Cecil and Jimmy Lyons (and yes, this white fanboy got their autographs on my copy of Spring of Two Blue-J's). They were both gentlemen, if a bit reticent and wary (I mean, after all, they had just exploded the cosmos for two hours), but they put up with us for a few minutes. What would I say to him now? Thanks again, for blowing my mind all these years?

Here's a random list of various resources and writing about Cecil Taylor that I have found useful over the years. It's hard to write about music, and it's especially difficult to write about the titanic maelstrom and towering achievements of a giant like Taylor, so I really appreciate it when I come across writing that manages to capture some of his intensity and originality in print. This list is not meant to be exhaustive by any means; this is just some of my favorite writing about Taylor: useful places to explore.

Gary Giddins has long been a champion of Taylor's, and his writing is always impeccably astute. The essays and reviews in Visions of Jazz (especially pp. 455-467) and Weather Bird are always enlightening, and, like any good music writing, send you back to the music.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, in their exemplary Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD (my favorite edition is the 5th, the last to include an in-depth and indispensable index) always provide excellent reviews and critical assessments.

I love Ekkehard Jost's relatively early (1974) take on Cecil's music, in his book Free Jazz, with his description of Taylor's emphasis on "a kind of playing whose dynamic impetus arose not from off-beat phrasing but from combining the parameters of time, intensity and pitch, thereby creating a new music quality, energy"(p. 69).

Musician Alex Ward has done some amazing detailed analysis of Taylor's work, both on his blog and in three extended compilations on YouTube. There's a lifetime of listening in his analyses alone!

After Taylor's death, there were naturally a lot of testaments, tributes, and career summaries on the web. Some of the best included:

 

--Alexander Hawkins: "The Unit Structures of Cecil Taylor" (the Wire)

--Taylor Ho Bynum:  "Visceral and Cathartic Joy: An Appreciation of Cecil Taylor" (Point of Departure) with reminiscences of his playing in Cecil's large ensembles.

--Adam Shatz: "The World of Cecil Taylor" (the New York Review of Books)

--David Grundy: " '...And Not Goodbye': Cecil Taylor" Part 1 and Part 2 (from his blog Streams of Expression) --includes an invaluable extended analysis of Taylor's poetry

--the Free Jazz Collective blog ran an excellent three-part "tribute to Cecil Taylor's music through his discography": Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

I am looking forward to Phil Freeman's upcoming biography of Taylor, due out later this year. I also read somewhere that Ben Young was working on a Taylor book, but I have heard no more about that.