From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cecil Percival Taylor (born March 15 or March 25, 1929 in New York City) is an American pianist and poet. Along with Ornette Coleman, he is now generally acknowledged to be one of the innovators of free jazz.

Taylor's first recording, Jazz Advance, was released in 1956, and is described by Cook & Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms which the pianist would later immerse himself in."

Taylor is known for being an extremely energetic, physical yet subtle player, producing exceedingly complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. At first listen, his dense and percussive music can be difficult to absorb, often described as if playing "88 tuned drums." He learned piano at six and went on to study at New York College of Music and New England Conservatory. After first steps in R&B and swing-styled small groups in the early 1950s, he formed his own band with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1956. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it was often difficult to find work,^[1] despite landmark recordings such as Unit Structures, Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come, and a pairing with John Coltrane (Coltrane Time/Hard Drivin' Jazz).

Taylor played and recorded predominantly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons from 1961 until Lyons's death in 1986, along with drummers Sunny Murray and later Andrew Cyrille. Within that group, known as "The Unit", the musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay.

From the early 1970s onwards, Taylor began to perform solo concerts, some of which were released as the Indent and Silent Tongues albums. He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and then a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.

Following Lyons's death, Taylor has played in a variety of settings ranging from solo (e.g. For Olim, Garden, Erzulie Maketh Scent, The Tree of Life, and In Willisau), the "Feel Trio" formed in the early 1990s with William Parker (bass) and Tony Oxley (drums) (Celebrated Blazons, Looking (The Feel Trio), and the 10-CD set 2 T's for a Lovely T) as well as larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label FMP, 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 Parker, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Louis Moholo, Paul Lovens, and others. Most of his recordings for the past several decades have been put out on European labels, with the exception of the unexpected release of Momentum Space (a meeting with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge recently released his 1998 Library of Congress performance Algonquin, a duet with violinist Mat Maneri. Few recordings from 2000 have yet been published, though Taylor, now in his seventies, continues to captivate audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, the Bösendorfer piano that features 9 extra lower register keys. A documentary spotlighting the enigmatic musician, All the Notes, was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver.

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 Baryshnikov and Heather Watts.

Taylor is also an accomplished poet, citing Robert Duncan, Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka as major influences.^[2] 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 unaccompanied.

Taylor is featured in the 1981 documentary film Imagine the Sound, in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.

• Jazz Advance, 1956
• The Cecil Taylor Quartet at Newport, 1957
• Looking Ahead!, 1958
• Coltrane Time (identical with Hard Driving Jazz), 1958
• Love for Sale, 1959
• The World of Cecil Taylor, 1960
• Air, 1961
• Jumpin' Punkins, 1961
• New York City R&B (with Buell Neidlinger), 1961
• Cell Walk for Celeste, 1961
• Mixed, 1961
• Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come, 1962
• Unit Structures, 1966
• Conquistador!, 1966
• Great Paris Concert, vol 1 & 2 (identical with Student Studies), 1966
• Praxis, 1968
• Communications, 1968 with Mike Mantler & Carla Bley's "JCOA: Jazz Composer's OrchestrA" (featuring Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Larry Coryell and Gato Barbieri.)
• The Great Concert (identical with Nuits de la Fondation Maeght), 1969
• Indent, 1973
• Akisakila, 1973
• Solo, 1973
• Spring of Two Blue J's, 1973
• Silent Tongues, 1974
• Dark to Themselves, 1976
• Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within), 1976
• Nachricht vom Lande, 1976
• Cecil Taylor & Mary Lou Williams: Embraced, 1977
• Cecil Taylor Unit, 1978
• 3 Phasis, 1978
• Live in the Black Forest, 1978
• One Two Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye, 1978
• Tony Williams: Joy of Flying, 1978
• Cecil Taylor and Max Roach: Historic Concerts, 1979
• Fly! Fly! Fly!, 1980
• Is it the Brewing Luminous, 1980
• Calling it the 8th, 1981
• Garden, 1981
• Winged Serpent, 1984
• Cecil Taylor Segments II/ Orchestra of two Continents, 1984
• For Olim, 1986
• Olu Iwa, 1986
• Iwnontonwusi - Live at Sweet Basil, 1986
• Live in Bologna, 1987
• Live in Vienna, 1987
• Chinampas, 1987
• Tzotzil Mummers Tzotzil, 1987
• Erzulie Maketh Scent, 1988
• Pleistozaen mit Wasser, 1988
• Riobec - Cecil Taylor & Günter Sommer, 1988
• Leaf Palm Hand, 1988
• Spots, Circles, and Fantasy, 1988
• Regalia - Cecil Taylor & Paul Lovens, 1988
• Remembrance, 1988
• The Hearth, 1988
• Riobec, 1988
• Legba Crossing, 1988
• Alms / Tiergarten (Spree), 1988
• In East Berlin, 1988
• In Florescence, 1989
• Looking (Berlin Version) solo, 1989
• Looking (Berlin Version) Corona, 1989
• Looking (The Feel Trio), 1989
• Celebrated Blazons, 1990
• Doubly Holy House, 1990
• Melancholy - Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Wolfgang Fuchs
• Nailed, 1990
• The Tree of Life, 1991
• Always a Pleasure - Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström, Tristan Honsinger 1993
• The Light of Corona- Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström 1996
• Almeda- Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström 1996
• Qu'a: Live at the Iridium, vol. 1 & 2 - Cecil Taylor, Harri Sjöström 1998
• Algonquin, 1998
• Incarnation, 1999
• The Willisau Concert, 2000

1. ^ Spellman, A. B. (1985 originally 1966). Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Limelight. ISBN 0-87910-042-7. 
2. ^ Interview

• Cecil-Taylor.com Artist Site

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Cecil Taylor

• Discography of Cecil Taylor, by Richard Shapiro
• Cecil Taylor Online Sessionography
• The FMP releases

• The Shape of Jazz to Come - A panel discussion on April 6, 1964
• "Cecil Taylor interview" for the WGBH series, Say Brother
• being matter ignited... - Interviewed by Chris Funkhouser on September 3, 1994
• Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Jason Gross, January 2000
• Innovation, improvisation - Interviewed by Miya Masaoka for the SF Bay Guardian, October 25, 2000
• Mr. Taylor's Filibuster - Interviewed by Kurt Gottschalk, March 11, 2004
• A Fireside Chat With Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Fred Jung