Cecil Taylor @80
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP5L8tjnB6w]
Excerpt from Ron Mann‘s 1981 “Imagine the Sound” documentary.
Cecil Percival Taylor (born March 15 or March 25, 1929 in New York City) is an American pianist and poet.
Along with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, he is generally acknowledged as on of the innovators of free jazz. Taylor’s music is cited by critics, however, as some of the most challenging in jazz, characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, 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, and his piano technique has often been likened to drums and percussion rather than to any other pianists, and resembling modern classical music as much as jazz.
See also: free jazz, atonality, avant-garde jazz
Hooray for Cecil ….. and, as luck would have it, I get to see him next month in Melbourne, Australia, as part of a local jazz festival, two performances, one with Tony Oxley and the other reciting poetry.