Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (born in March 15, 1929, in New York City) 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 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). He has also been described as "like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings".
Cecil Percival Taylor (born in March 15, 1929, in New York City) 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 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). He has also been described as "like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings".
Solo
*2024 stock* Cecil Taylor's masterwork is captured on this Japanese CD (reissue of the eponymous album released on LP in 1973) that dates back to his zenith of performance, when he was pushing the envelope of improvisational music to unprecedented heights of intensity and precision. While Taylor's work in the 1960s was impressive, his performance in the 1970s, and this particular track in particular, is absolutely breathtaking. With a style that may appear chaotic upon initial listen, Cecil's f…
In the Brewing Luminous: The Life & Music of Cecil Taylor (Book)
Cecil Taylor’s life was a string of mysteries that made a beautiful necklace of precious sounds, dances, and poetry he called music. Philip Freeman’s book In the Brewing Luminous gives us a wonderful glimpse of Cecil’s life and music. Hopefully this book will inspire us all in ways we can’t imagine.” (William Parker) For 60 years, Cecil Taylor’s music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz. His volcanic piano improvisations, delivered with astonishing technical command and unrelenting …
Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within)
*2024 stock* A solo performance by Cecil Taylor at the peak of his powers at a jazz festival in Austria in 1976. The insane keyboard rampaging that he performed with devilish concentration is only possible with the genius Taylor, who has reached a height that no one else can reach! This is the Cecil Taylor of the 70's!
The World Of Cecil Taylor
*2024 stock* "One can only imagine what the reaction of the average jazz fan was in 1960 when this session was recorded. This is a wonderful document from early in Taylor's career, when he was midway between modernist approaches to standard material and his own radical experiments that would come to full fruition a few years hence... What's extra amazing is how deeply entrenched the blues feel and pulse are in this music, already bound for the further reaches of abstraction. They never left Tayl…
More Lost Performances (Revisited)
"The almost five year span bookended in this particular Ayler revisitation marks, in a certain sense,
the beginning and end points of the most lasting and creative portion of his remarkable, though
sadly brief, career." – Brian Olewnick
Silent Tongues - Live At Montreux '74
*2023 stock* "Cecil Taylor's solo piano set at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974 drew critical acclaim, earning five-star reviews from the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide and AllMusic's Scott Yanow. The set features Taylor's five-movement work 'Silent Tongues,' along with two encores. After being out of print for nearly four decades, the classic live album has been remastered at Infrasonic Mastering and pressed on audiophile-grade vinyl at Pallas Group in Germany. Silent Tongues is a must-have …
The Great Paris Concert
Cecil Taylor has always been considered one of the most daring and radical improvisers within the jazz genre, often pushing the boundaries with avant-garde and free jazz compositions. The Great Paris Concert is no exception Taylor's reputation. The artistic communication between the players of Taylor's quartet is second to none, and it's certainly palpable on every track of the album. Echoing each other's melodies, and 'battling' each other with solos, the group may have never sounded better. Th…
Indent
*2023 stock* Indent, a live solo album by Cecil Taylor, was recorded in Ohio in March 1973. The album was originally released on Taylor’s own Unit Core label and subsequently more widely released on the Freedom label. The album has received critical praise, including a 4/5 star review from the Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. Previously out of print for decades, the phenomenal work is finally coming back to vinyl with an audiophile-grade pressing from Pallas Group. The album was remastered for v…
Mysteries:Untitled
*2023 stock* 'The chief attraction of this album is an almost 50 minute, previously unreleased solo performance by Taylor given at New York University in November 1976 as part of the Bösendorfer Festival, a benefit series for the Kitchen performance centre. His previous solo recital that year had been in August at Moosham Castle in the Lungau region of Salzburg during an open-air festival, subsequently released as Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) (Enja, 1977). Taylor had come across a Böse…
Indent
*2023 stock* In 1973, Indent marked a new direction for one of the founders and masters of what was to be called »free jazz«; yet it turned out to have defined styles and highly sophisticated rules of its own. It was radically new and initially difficult to tune into for some. Cecil Taylor was composing in fractions of seconds. He was free to decide what to compose but in the end intelligent structures can be perceived with a multitude of »cells« being introduced, developed and layered one upon …
Silent Tongues
*2023 stock* 'If you had to pick three architects of modern jazz piano, you could just about cover everything with Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. Despite his phenomenal talent, Taylor may have seemed like the lesser influence at first, as most of his followers were relegated to the avant-garde end of things, but over the years his influence has grown and these days you are liable to hear Taylor type assaults on the piano from guys like Craig Taborn, Jason Moran or others, while they p…
Poschiavo
*2023 stock* In the life of every artist comes the time when toward the end of his existence, he will create a monument to his ever-lasting artistic efforts. It is the Swan-Song for which he wishes to remain being known; for centuries, this has crossed the borderlines between cultures and arts. Poschiavo was recorded when Cecil Taylor was sixty-nine years old, very much at the height of his musical and poetic powers. Recorded in Europe on a fine Bösendorfer grand piano in perfect digital clarity…
Respiration
Respiration adds to the Cecil Taylor oeuvre a nearly perfect 43 minutes of Taylor’s solo power recorded at a beautiful level of quality. It comes from early-ish in his career—it’s always surprising to me, even though I know the history very well, how early Taylor was going this far away from the rails—when he had only just cemented his mature vision ( Conquistador! and Unit Structures were 1966). It feels as joyfully playful for him as it does for him as it does for us.
It’s hard to tell sometim…
With(Exit) To Student Studies, Revisited
Temporary Super Offer! 'Cecil Taylor’s whole career was a wave-front of exploration. The analogy with light is apposite enough. He evolved so fast most of us never quite caught up and relied instead on a few safe generalisations that momentarily applied around 1962 and only occasionally thereafter. Taylor rarely referenced the space programme, and admitted towards the end of his life that he had found the moon landings “banal”. Like Sun Ra, he was a cosmonaut of sound, breaking free of gravity a…
Cecil Taylor / Bill Dixon / Tony Oxley
'As evidenced by this release of the set, the music played that night was intimate, even delicate. It still seems that Dixon didn't quite sit down at the table with his mates, and his electronic effects don't do him any favors, but credit seems due to him for keeping the set at an unusual slow burn. There aren't the displays of pyrotechnics evidenced in Taylor and Oxley's duo performances. Instead, piano and drums dance lightly around the trumpet's background wash, creating a music both sparse a…
....... Being Astral And All Registers – Power Of Two......
A live (first class quality) recording of the duo from 2002 - from the personal archives of Tony Oxley.
Music From Two Continents (Live At Jazz Jamboree '84)
Full-length, legendary Cecil Taylor Orchestra concert from Jazz Jamboree 1984 feat. greatest names on American and European free jazz scene.
Corona
A grand reunion of sorts in Berlin on the first day of November, 1996. Under the auspices of Free Music Production, Cecil Taylor, the great pianist and one of the premier musical minds of the 20th century, joined forces with his early comrade, drummer Sunny Murray, for a set of improvised duets. Murray was part of Taylor's important groups starting in 1959, including the trio with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, with which Taylor toured Europe in 1962 and 1963, recording the seminal Nefertiti, the…
Gottingen
Do you remember the legendary CD Legba Crossing released on FMP? Of course, you do! Each Cecil Taylor's music fan does it! Two years later Ove Volquartz assembled almost the same line-up and brought Cecil Taylor to Gottingen to work with the legendary artist longer and more intense. Here you have the whole monumental concert they gave on September 15th! What is the difference? Fundamental as always in the case of such great visionaries like Cecil was! Here, additionally, Mr. Taylor performs not …
Lifting the Bandstand
First time ever on CD, never before published Cecil Taylor Quintet feat. Harri Sjostrom - sax, Tristan Honsinger - cello, Teppo Hauta-aho - bass, and Paul Lovens - drums. The legendary band recorded live at Tampere Jazz Happening 1998. Recorded October 30.1998 at Tampere Jazz Happening by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE at Tampere Jazz Happening. Originally produced for YLE by Veli- Pekka Heinonen. Final mix by Patrick Römer and Harri Sjöström + Paul Lovens. Mastering by Patrick Römer of Un…