Historic Concerts is a live album

Live album

A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...

 by Cecil Taylor

Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and...

 and Max Roach

Max Roach

Maxwell 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...

 recorded at the McMillin Theatre, Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, NYC on December 15, 1979 and released on the Soul Note

Black Saint/Soul Note

Black Saint and Soul Note are two affiliated Italian jazz independent record labels. Since their conception in the 1970s, they have released albums from a variety of influential jazz musicians, particularly in the genre of free jazz.-History:...

 label. The album features solo and duet performances by Taylor and Roach along with interviews recorded after the concert.

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow

Scott Yanow

Scott Yanow is an American jazz commentator, known for many contributions to the Allmusic website, for writing ten books on jazz and for reviewing jazz recordings for over 30 years.-Biography:...

states "The passionate music is quite atonal but coherent, with Taylor displaying an impressive amount of energy and the two masters (who had not rehearsed or ever played together before) communicating pretty well".

Track listing

All compositions by Cecil Taylor & Max Roach.

1. "Presentation" - 1:06
2. "Drums Solo" - 5:02
3. "Piano Solo" - 5:04
4. "Duets, Part 1" - 40:04
5. "Duets, Part 2" - 38:32
6. "Interviews, Part 1" - 9:36
7. "Interviews, Part 2" - 7:14
   • Recorded at the McMillin Theatre, Columbia University, NYC on December 15, 1979