Cecil Taylor

September 2000 was a good month for Cecil Taylor on tape. On the 3rd he played the solo set at Willisau that Intakt released in 2002. On the 10th he was in Ruvo di Puglia for the Talos Festival, where he performed with members of the Italian Instabile Orchestra (The Owner of the River Bank, Enja 2003) and, on the same day, alone.

The solo set stayed in the vault until 2021, when Enja issued it as part of its fiftieth anniversary. It is a single track, listed simply as Free Improvisation #1. Taylor was seventy-one. The Penguin Guide, writing about Willisau a week earlier, noted the rare pleasure of hearing him in good fidelity on a good instrument; the same applies here.

Taylor solo in his seventies is a different proposition from the 1970s Enja solos (Air Above Mountains, Indent). The density is still there, but the phrases are longer, the silences count for more, and the material is often sung or spoken before it is played. This is one of the last unreleased solo concerts to surface.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's Enja Jazz Master Works series (no. 179), with liner notes by Hiroki Sugita.