Cecil Taylor
Prelude
Las Vegas, 1999. A warm night in January. I'm listening to KUNV
playing a Randy Weston number and writing the introduction to
Bitches Brew. Not he Miles Davis classic, but a web page on Fusion
jazz. The music is guiding my pen. Seemingly ending just as I
conclude the piece. The disc jockey comes on and reviews the songs
played. Then says "Everything is not bebop. Everything is not
straight ahead. But it's jazz in the traditional sense."
It's a pleasant August afternoon in San Diego. The year is 1979.
Martin Rev, of Suicide, and I are listening to sounds on KSDS, City
College's all jazz station. Marty had studied piano under Lennie
Tristano and is well versed in jazz. We're putting our knowledge to
the test by guessing who the musicians are on the songs being aired.
Both of us are doing well. Then we're stumped by a certain sax
player.
About to give up I have a revelation and shout Rahsaan Roland
Kirk. Soon the announcer says "that was Rahsaan Roland
Kirk." Rev is impressed. "How'd you do that?" I tell
him I remembered hearing a whistle, or some percussive thing, or
something. And with that subtle stuff going down it had to be
Rahsaan. The beauty of jazz is that whether you're writing,
listening to, or playing it, the music always takes you to some wondrous
place. A very special spiritual place. Music in it's
"totality" is always greater than the sum of it's parts.
This is the way Cecil Taylor approaches his music.
Steve Lacy (who worked with Taylor from 1953-1959) in his article
"View From the Brink", says "There are two different
kinds of jazz: offensive and defensive... Playing with Cecil Taylor
immediately put me into the offensive mode." Taylor himself
once said that "Technique is a weapon to do whatever must be
done." Cecil has been on the "offensive" since the
1950's and he's finally winning the battle.
Biography
Cecil Taylor was born in Long Island City in March (15 or 25) of
1929. Although some sources have the year as 1933. His mother played
violin and was a friend of drummer Sonny Greer. And his uncle
performed on piano, drums, and violin. His father, a chef by trade,
would sing the blues. Cecil has said he liked to hear his father
sing "shouts and things that go back farther than the
blues." From the age of five Cecil studied piano, and even
percussion with a classical tutor. For awhile he also played drums,
"but never worked up to a professional level."
Music was always a given in the Taylor household. And he grew up
listening to Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith,
Billie Holiday, Ella
Fitzgerald and Erroll Garner. Among Cecil's early influences were
Duke Ellington and Fats Waller. He says of the later that
"Waller was a great piano player; he could push a group no end:
and when he played the piano, it sang." The song
"Wallering" from Looking Ahead, is named for Fats.
Taylor says of Duke: "one of the things I learned from
Ellington is that you can make the group you play with sing if you
realize that each instrument has a distinct personality and (that)
you can bring out the singing aspect of that personality if you use
the right timbres for the instrument."
Later Taylor cites Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Thelonius Monk,
and Horace Silver as being influential. On Monk and atonality he
says "Basically, it's not important whether a certain chord
happens to fit some student's definition of atonality. A man like
Monk, for example, is concerned with growing and enriching his
musical conception, and what he does comes at a living idea out of
his life's experience, not from a theory. It may or may not turn out
to be atonal."
From 1951-1955 Cecil Taylor attended The New England
Conservatory of Music. It was here he discovered the atonalists
Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. And more modern masters such as Bartok
and Stravinsky. Also during this period he was listening to Dave
Brubeck and Lennie Tristano. Young Cecil learned his lesson well.
Bassist Bruell Niedlinger is classically trained and has tenued with
the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He has this to say about the
pianist: "He is phenomenal. There is not a musician I've ever
met, including Igor Stravinsky and Pierre Boulez, who come anywhere
near having the abilities that Cecil Taylor has." Niedlinger
played with Taylor from 1955-1960. He can be heard on Jazz Advance
(1955), Looking Ahead (1958), and Air (1960), among other
recordings.
By the mid 1950's Taylor was leading his own small groups with
musicians Buell Niedlinger, Steve Lacy, and Archie Shepp. In 1957 he
played the Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, and New York's
Great South Bay Jazz Festival in 1958. And in 1966 Blue Note
released two outstanding sessions: Unit Structures and Conquistador
(with Bill Dixon on trumpet). Taylor, along with Bill Dixon, was one
of the organizers of the Jazz Composers' Guild in 1964-65.
The late 60's and early 70's saw Taylor struggling to get club
gigs and record dates. During this period he worked as a record
saleman, cook, and dishwasher. He began teaching at the University
of Wisconsin, Antioch College in Ohio, and Glassboro State College
in New Jersey. Virtually all Taylor's music from 1967 to 1977 was
recorded in Europe.
In 1973 he ran his own record label, Unit Core. Releasing Indents
(Mysteries) and Spring of Two Blue-Js. Around 1980 his career began
to gather momentum with the help from releases in Japan and Europe.
He was elected by the Critics to the Down Beat Hall of Fame in 1975.
Taylor was finally starting to get the recognition he deserved.
As always seems to be the case with "dense and intense"
jazz, Taylor's music appealed to, and was more readily accepted
overseas. And in 1986 he received a very high honour. He was invited
to a "Cecil Taylor Week" sponsored by the Berlin Free Jazz
Society. All the sessons were recorded by Free Music Production (FMP
Records) and are available on an eleven CD box set. Taylor has also
been voted number one pianist in the Down Beat (Magazine)
international Critics Poll for nine consequtive years.
Cecil Taylor is still playing today. Vibrant and vigorous as
ever. And as recently as February 12, 1999 has appeared at a Library
of Congress concert in Washington, D.C. He is a man that commands
great respect. For he has never compromised his creativity. As far
back as 1956 Nat Hentoff, Associate Editor of Down Beat Magazine
from 1953-1957, wrote in the liner notes to Jazz Dance that "We
are in the presence here, and in all (Taylor's) works, of that
rarest of phenomena- a genuine creator. And once you absorb his
music you will never quite hear the same again." If you have
never experienced the music of Cecil Taylor I invite you to do so.
Absorb the energy and enjoy!
Richard Bianchino |
