Cecil Taylor Unit
Antioch College
Yellow Springs, Ohio
April 3rd 1971
Remastered FM.
This post was inspired by a Mike L. comment.
Cecil Percival Taylor was a classically trained pianist.
A pioneer of free-jazz and occasional poet.
It's a great recording but their relentless approach to jamming
may not be to everyone's taste? :)
This band throws caution to the wind.
Frank Zappa might well have dismissed it as "noodling".
file under: Extreme Jazz Improv.
'Yellow Springs' sounds like an Australian chardonnay.
regards
Titus
Part 1 (61:41)
Part 2 (44:55)
cool titus, though really with frank?
ReplyDeleteas out as cecil's music may appear, his compositions were practiced with his ensembles for weeks of long days before live performance.
i used to play with some of his sidemen and cecil was very zappa-like in his exactingly high standards.
looking forward to hearing this, thank you!
mL
Wouldn't over-preparation defeat the object of free-jazz? (asking for a friend) LOL. Cool that you came to Cecil's defence :)
Deletetitus- imagine he broke many a musician with that regimen, but for cecil i imagine it took that much preparation for his ensembles to master the cells and motifs required to accomplish his grand visions. less so for his long standing units (with lyons, cyrille etc) but for the large ensemble work, there was a great deal of through-composed music, with sections of 'free' playing by subsets of the groups.
ReplyDelete...see winged serpent
-one of his best imo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Serpent_(Sliding_Quadrants)
cecil's contemporary anthony braxton even wrote out his soloists parts later in his career (though i prefer his early 70s work with dave holland and drummer barry altshul)
mL
Thank you for sharing this Cecil Taylor!
ReplyDeleteWhile understandably not everyone’s cup of tea ( I remember one of those Marsalis brothers dissing him ) I’ve always been a big fan of his music.
yes! in ken burn's narrow focus jazz doc. he played a little cecil - and then let neo-classicist branford rail against him.
ReplyDeletealong the lines of one can only listen to cecil if one can *play* cecil, and used the example. of baseball...BUT most people who watch baseball can't actually play baseball! his argument was moronic.
especially as cecil had performed pre-free giants like elvin jones and max roach (was there for both, the latter in front of 10,000 rapt listeners of all ages)
mL
I'd be amazed if they could identically reproduce this set
ReplyDeletethe following night! :)
no more than two tennis players would re-enact a match, though they might return with the same game plan, or with one modified by the previous. the ingredients would be the same. the execution anew.
ReplyDeletethe smaller group performances were more improvised - as less explicit preparation would be needed to achieve the desired critical mass. jimmy lyons played with him for 20 years so there was much musical telepathy.
mL
So a jam then :)
Delete