Cecil Taylor arrived at the MPS studio in Villingen on Friday 12 September 1980, after a flight from New York and a three-hour drive, and practised for five hours. On Sunday the 14th he recorded. The piano was the Bösendorfer Imperial that MPS had installed at Friedrich Gulda's request; Taylor, for whom the quality of the instrument was part of the technique, had played it before, in the duets with Gulda. When the tape stopped he wrote in the studio guest book: Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!
Eight pieces, forty-seven minutes. T (Beautiful Young'n) lasts fifty-three seconds. Rocks Sub Amba, the closer, ten minutes. Joachim-Ernst Berendt, in the notes, called Taylor a master of form and heard the first side run as a suite with everything connected, and heard inside it blues licks, bop phrases, Tatum runs, Bud Powell, even a boogie-woogie. Scott Yanow finds the lyricism more emphasised than usual and Taylor sometimes quite relaxed, without compromise. Ken Dryden at AllMusic calls it one of his hidden gems. Jazzwise, reviewing the 2012 remaster with new notes by Alexander von Schlippenbach, gives four stars and writes that in all the fury he is playing the right notes.
Of the many Taylor solo records, this is the studio one, on the best piano, in the best sound. If someone wants one to start with, it is this.
Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.
