Cecil Percival Taylor is an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
pianistA pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of
free jazzFree jazz is an approach to jazz music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz pioneers varied widely, the common feature was a dissatisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s...
. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His piano technique has been likened to percussion, for example described as "eighty-eight tuned drums" (referring to the number of keys on a standard piano), and also to
Art TatumArthur "Art" Tatum, Jr. was an American jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind.Tatum is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time...
's.
Early life
Taylor began playing piano at age six and studied at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory. After first steps in
R&BRhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
and
swingSwing music, also known as swing jazz or simply swing, is a form of jazz music that developed in the early 1930s and became a distinctive style by 1935 in the United States...
-styled small groups in the early 1950s, he formed his own band with soprano saxophonist
Steve LacySteve Lacy , born Steven Norman Lackritz in New York City, was a jazz saxophonist and composer recognized as one of the important players of soprano saxophone....
in 1956.
Taylor's first recording,
Jazz AdvanceJazz Advance is the debut album by pianist Cecil Taylor recorded for the Transition label in September 1956. The album features performances by Taylor with Buell Neidlinger, Denis Charles and Steve Lacy.-Reception:...
, featured Lacy and was released in 1956. It is described by
CookRichard David Cook was a British jazz writer, magazine editor and former record company executive.Sometimes credited as R. D. Cook, Cook was born in Kew, Surrey and lived in west London as an adult. He was co-author, with Brian Morton, of The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings , now in its ninth...
and
MortonBrian Morton is a Scottish writer, journalist and broadcaster, mainly specialising in jazz and modern literature. Born in Paisley, near Glasgow and raised in Dunoon, Morton was educated at Edinburgh University and taught in the late 1970s at the University of East Anglia and the University of...
in the
Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional
post-bopPost-bop is a term for a form of small-combo jazz music that evolved in the early-to-mid sixties. The genre's origins lie in seminal work by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
form in this set, it already points to the freedoms which the pianist would later immerse himself in." Taylor's Quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957
Newport Jazz FestivalThe Newport Jazz Festival is a music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island, USA. It was established in 1954 by socialite Elaine Lorillard, who, together with husband Louis Lorillard, financed the festival for many years. The couple hired jazz impresario George Wein to organize the...
. He collaborated with saxophonist
John ColtraneJohn William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
in 1958 (
Stereo Drive, currently available as
Coltrane TimeStereo Drive is an album by jazz musician Cecil Taylor featuring John Coltrane, released in 1959 on United Artists Records, catalogue UAS 5014. The mono edition was issued as UAL 4014 with the title Hard Driving Jazz, and later reissued under Coltrane's name in 1963 as Coltrane Time...
).
1950s and '60s
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found Taylor's approach to performance (long pieces) unhelpful in conducting business. Landmark recordings, like
Unit StructuresUnit Structures is a 1966 album by Cecil Taylor released on the Blue Note label. The Allmusic Review by Scott Yanow states "Taylor's high-energy atonalism fit in well with the free jazz of the period but he was actually leading the way rather than being part of a movement.....
(1966), appeared. By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist
Jimmy LyonsJimmy Lyons was an alto saxophone player. He is best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit.-Biography:...
, one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons and drummer
Sunny MurrayJames Marcellus Arthur "Sunny" Murray is one of the pioneers of the free jazz style of drumming.-Biography:...
(and later
Andrew CyrilleAndrew Charles Cyrille is an avant-garde jazz drummer.Cyrille was born in Brooklyn, New York into a family with a mother from Haiti. He began studying science at St...
) formed the core personnel of The Unit, Taylor's primary group effort until Lyons's premature death in 1986. With 'the Unit', musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay.
Solo concerts
Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the early 1970s. Many of these were released on album and include
IndentIndent is a live album by Cecil Taylor recorded in Ohio in March 1973 and originally released on Taylor's own Unit Core label as Mysteries and subsequently more widely released on the Arista Freedom label as Indent. It was the first solo piano performance released by Taylor but was recorded over...
(1973), side one of
Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973),
Silent Tongues-Track listing:# "Abyss "/"Petals and Filaments "/"Jitney " - 18:23# "Crossing Part 1 " - 8:36# "Crossing Part 2 " - 10:00# "After All " - 9:59...
(1974),
GardenGarden is a live album by Cecil Taylor recorded at Basel Switzerland, November 16, 1981 and released on the Hat Hut label. The album features seven solo performances by Taylor on a Bösendorfer grand piano and was originally released as a double LP in 1982 the rereleased as two single CDs entitled...
(1982),
For OlimFor Olim is a live album by Cecil Taylor recorded in Berlin, Germany on April 9, 1986 and released on the Soul Note label. The album features a solo concert performance by Taylor.-Reception:...
(1987),
Erzulie Maketh ScentErzulie Maketh Scent is a live album featuring a solo performance by Cecil Taylor recorded in Berlin on July 16, 1988 as part of month long series of concerts by Taylor and released on the FMP label....
(1989) and
The Tree of LifeThe Tree of Life is a live album of a solo piano concert by Cecil Taylor recorded at the Berlin Opera House on March 19, 1991 and released on the FMP label....
(1998). He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for
Jimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a
Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 1973 and then a
MacArthur FellowshipThe MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship is an award given by the John D. and Catherine T...
in 1991.
1990s and the Feel Trio
Following Lyons's death in 1986 Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with
William ParkerWilliam Parker is an American free jazz double bassist, poet and composer.-Biography:Parker was not formally trained as a classical player, though he did study with Jimmy Garrison, Richard Davis, and Wilbur Ware and learned the tradition. Parker is one of few jazz bassists who regularly plays arco...
(bass) and
Tony OxleyTony Oxley is an English free-jazz drummer and one of the founders of Incus Records.-Biography:Tony Oxley was born in Sheffield, England. A self-taught pianist by age eight, he first began playing the drums at seventeen. While in the Black Watch military band from 1957 to 1960 he studied music...
(drums); the group can be heard on
Celebrated Blazons,
Looking (The Feel Trio) and the 10-CD set
2 T's for a Lovely T. He has also performed with larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label
FMPFree Music Production is a German record label founded by Jost Gebers, Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, and Alexander von Schlippenbach in 1969, specializing in free improvisation and free jazz, usually by European, often German musicians....
, resulting in a massive boxed set of performances in duet and trio with a who's who of European free improvisors, including Oxley, Derek Bailey,
Evan ParkerEvan Shaw Parker is a British free-improvising saxophone player from the European free jazz scene.Recording and performing prolifically with many collaborators, Parker was a pivotal figure in the development of European free jazz and free improvisation, and has pioneered or substantially expanded...
,
Han BenninkHan Bennink is a Dutch jazz drummer and percussionist. On occasion his recordings have featured his playing on clarinet, violin, banjo and piano....
,
Tristan HonsingerTristan Honsinger is a cello player active in free jazz and free improvisation. He is perhaps best known for his long-running collaboration with free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and guitarist Derek Bailey....
,
Louis MoholoLouis Tebugo Moholo , is a South African jazz drummer.He formed The Blue Notes with Chris McGregor, Johnny Dyani, Nikele Moyake, Mongezi Feza and Dudu Pukwana, and emigrated to Europe with them in 1964, eventually settling in London, where he formed part of a South African exile community that made...
,
Paul LovensPaul Lovens is a musician. He plays drums, percussion, singing saw and various selected and unselected cymbals. He has also performed with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra and Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra....
, and others. Most of his latter day recordings have been put out on European labels, with the exception of
Momentum Space (a meeting with
Dewey RedmanDewey Redman was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett....
and
Elvin JonesElvin Ray Jones was a jazz drummer of the post-bop era. He showed interest in drums at a young age, watching the circus bands march by his family's home in Pontiac, Michigan....
) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998 Library of Congress performance
Algonquin, a duet with violinist
Mat ManeriMat Maneri, born on October 4, 1969 in Brooklyn, New York is an American composer, improviser and jazz violin and viola player, specifically derivatives such as the five-string viola, the electric six-string violin, and the baritone violin...
. Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, a
BösendorferBösendorfer is an Austrian piano manufacturer, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha. The brand is known for producing pianos with a uniquely rich, singing, and sustaining tone...
piano that features nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary entitled
"All the Notes", was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in an earlier
documentary filmDocumentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Imagine the SoundImagine the Sound is a 1981 Canadian documentary film about free jazz, directed by Ron Mann. It features interviews with and musical and dramatic performances by pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Archie Shepp, trumpeter Bill Dixon and pianist Paul Bley. The film has been digitally restored and was...
(1981), in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.
2000s
Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continues to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) as well as with other musicians such as
Joe LockeJoseph Paul Locke is a US American jazz vibraphonist, composer, recording artist and educator.-Biography:Locke was born in Palo Alto, California, but raised in Rochester, New York...
,
Max RoachMaxwell Lemuel "Max" Roach was an American jazz percussionist, drummer, and composer.A pioneer of bebop, Roach went on to work in many other styles of music, and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history...
, and
Amiri BarakaAmiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
. In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium 2005 was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz, and the same in 2009 for the Cecil Taylor Trio at the Highline Ballroom in 2009. The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall. An autobiography, more concerts, and other projects are in the works. In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited edition double
LPThe LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
titled
Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs, a set of duos with long-time collaborator Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the
Village VanguardThe Village Vanguard is a jazz club located at in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. At first, it also featured other forms of music such as folk music and beat poetry, but it switched to an all-jazz format in 1957.-History:Over 100 jazz...
in New York City.
Ballet and dance
In addition to piano, Taylor has always been interested in ballet and dance. His mother, who died while he was still young, was a dancer and also played the piano and violin. Taylor once said: "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes". He collaborated with dancer Dianne McIntyre in 1977 and 1979. In 1979 he also composed and played the music for a twelve-minute ballet "Tetra Stomp: Eatin' Rain in Space", featuring
Mikhail BaryshnikovMikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is a Soviet and American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974...
and
Heather WattsHeather Watts was a principal dancer with New York City Ballet. A native of California, Ms. Watts was born as Linda Heather Watts in Long Beach on September 27, 1953. She started taking up ballet at the age of 10, came to New York at the age of 13 on a Ford Foundation scholarship to attend the...
.
Poetry
Taylor is a
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, citing
Robert DuncanRobert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...
,
Charles OlsonCharles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...
and
Amiri BarakaAmiri Baraka , formerly known as LeRoi Jones, is an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism...
as major influences. He often integrates his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The CD
Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems, accompanying himself on percussion.
Influence and musical style
According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and
Ornette ColemanOrnette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
in 1959. In 1964, Taylor co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild to enhance the working possibilities of
avant-garde jazzAvant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. Avant-jazz often sounds very similar to free jazz, but differs in that, despite its distinct departure from traditional harmony, it has a predetermined structure over which ...
musicians.
Taylor's style and methods have been described as 'constructivist'. Despite Scott Yanow's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music":
he goes on to praise Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance," and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision."
This vision is one of Taylor's greatest influences upon others:
External links