Cecil Taylor Article in NY Times

[paul secor]

Cecil Taylor

In typical NY Times music reporting fashion, Ben Ratliff says that he spent five hours over two days speaking with Cecil Taylor, and then devotes about one third of his article writing about other pianists who are playing in the concert series honoring Mr. Taylor.

[AllenLowe]

given the way Taylor responds to interviews, it might have been the only way to do it.

[JETman]

I know I'm inviting flaming given the way these discussion boards have evolved into a "gang up" atmosphere, but this morning I'm in one of those "I don't give a f***" moods.

After listening to (and studying) jazz for the last 25 years or so, I just do not get why all music produced by artists like Cecil Taylor or Anthony Braxton is automatically labeled "genius".

My own shortcomings aside, why not just celebrate that the New York Times has deemed Mr. Taylor a worthy subject, instead of lamenting the fact that the entire article wasn't devoted to him?

[JSngry]

After listening to (and studying) jazz for the last 25 years or so, I just do not get why all music produced by artists like Cecil Taylor or Anthony Braxton is automatically labeled "genius".

Because most people have still not learned to tell the difference between "the work of a genius" and "a work of genius".

Not sure that I have either, really, but knowing that you don't know is the first step, I suppose.

CT & AB are both geniuses in my book. Unquestionably. But is everything they do genius? Hmmm....

[AllenLowe]

exactly. Braxton and Cecil are proven entities, in my book. But we can't expect everything they produce to be great.

[JETman]

exactly. Braxton and Cecil are proven entities, in my book. But we can't expect everything they produce to be great.

Yet the OP is clearly annoyed that the Times had the audacity to construct the article as they did. I was just conjecturing that it was because of the feeling that Cecil Taylor deserves better because he's so wonderful.

[Chuck Nessa]

He does and he is.

Edited May 4, 2012 by Chuck Nessa

[mjazzg]

Yet the OP is clearly annoyed that the Times had the audacity to construct the article as they did. I was just conjecturing that it was because of the feeling that Cecil Taylor deserves better because he's so wonderful.

I didn't read the OP as that. Simply that the article was ostensibly about CT but in reality not enough was written about that artist. I read simple frustration with journalistic decisions.

No mention by OP of genius status or otherwise that I can see or infer.

And in my book (but maybe not other's) CT's well worth some column inches if only for me to learn more about an artist I respect but don't fully understand

[JETman]

Nobody DESERVES to be written about in any publication, is my point. Humility happens far too infrequently in all walks of life.

Take what you can get, and link the article. If you're gonna bemoan the inadequacy of the article, why bother linking it? To bring up yet another example of the obvious (jazz is disrespected in this country) to light?

[Pete C]

Cecil Taylor

In typical NY Times music reporting fashion, Ben Ratliff says that he spent five hours over two days speaking with Cecil Taylor, and then devotes about one third of his article writing about other pianists who are playing in the concert series honoring Mr. Taylor.

Well, the article is a tie-in to a concert series honoring him, and the thrust of the article is his legacy, so it seems perfectly natural that he'd write about those other pianists. And he quotes those other pianists talking about Cecil, so I don't understand what the problem is.

Though the fact that he has female assistants lighting his cigarettes and bringing him champagne makes me lose a bit of respect for him, and I do find his extra-pianistic performance antics rather silly and annoying.

Edited May 4, 2012 by Pete C

[Lazaro Vega]

"He is probably the only truly major bandleader of the jazz tradition whose tunes are almost never covered by anyone else."

Thank you Steve Lacy for making that "almost."

[CraigP]

Though the fact that he has female assistants lighting his cigarettes and bringing him champagne makes me lose a bit of respect for him...

Depends on what brand champagne was being served...and can an a-g jazz artist afford assistants?

[Larry Kart]

I didn't get any sense from the original post that the poster thought Taylor was being disrespected. Instead, the poster seemed to be puzzled. as was I as a former journalist, why so little that Taylor said during those five hours was deemed worthy of being quoted. Could be that what he said was just too abstract and/or spacey in Ratliff's estimation?

I do recall interviews that left me frustrated and more or less at a loss as to how to write them up, but not five-hour ones. I also recall an interview with Sam Kinison (ostensibly) that turned out to be with his younger brother pretending to be Sam because Sam was too wasted or couldn't be bothered to talk. Fortunately, I figured this out in time.

Though the fact that he has female assistants lighting his cigarettes and bringing him champagne makes me lose a bit of respect for him...

Depends on what brand champagne was being served...and can an a-g jazz artist afford assistants?

My guess is that he doesn't need to afford them, that they're probably acolytes.

[Pete C]

My guess is that he doesn't need to afford them, that they're probably acolytes.

I don't know if there's still a program like this, but the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs used to have an arts apprenticeship program that would get work study money for college students to work with arts nonprofits as well as artists who have received public funding.

Five hours of interview or not, this wasn't a magazine profile.

I once saw a live interview of Ornette Coleman at an AAJE (is that what it was called?) conference. It was like watching two beings from different planets trying to communicate.

Edited May 4, 2012 by Pete C

[JETman]

I didn't get any sense from the original post that the poster thought Taylor was being disrespected. Instead, the poster seemed to be puzzled. as was I as a former journalist, why so little that Taylor said during those five hours was deemed worthy of being quoted. Could be that what he said was just too abstract and/or spacey in Ratliff's estimation?

I do recall interviews that left me frustrated and more or less at a loss as to how to write them up, but not five-hour ones. I also recall an interview with Sam Kinison (ostensibly) that turned out to be with his younger brother pretending to be Sam because Sam was too wasted or couldn't be bothered to talk. Fortunately, I figured this out in time.

Though the fact that he has female assistants lighting his cigarettes and bringing him champagne makes me lose a bit of respect for him...

Depends on what brand champagne was being served...and can an a-g jazz artist afford assistants?

My guess is that he doesn't need to afford them, that they're probably acolytes.

Maybe Ratliff wasn't afforded the space to write an extensive article.....or five covering the details of his conversation with Cecil?

[JSngry]

The purpose of the article is not to profile Cecil Taylor, it's to pimp the upcoming concert series. Cecil's just there to get you to read the article to get you to come out to the series.

And don't think that Cecil don't know it!

[Larry Kart]

I didn't get any sense from the original post that the poster thought Taylor was being disrespected. Instead, the poster seemed to be puzzled. as was I as a former journalist, why so little that Taylor said during those five hours was deemed worthy of being quoted. Could be that what he said was just too abstract and/or spacey in Ratliff's estimation?

I do recall interviews that left me frustrated and more or less at a loss as to how to write them up, but not five-hour ones. I also recall an interview with Sam Kinison (ostensibly) that turned out to be with his younger brother pretending to be Sam because Sam was too wasted or couldn't be bothered to talk. Fortunately, I figured this out in time.

Though the fact that he has female assistants lighting his cigarettes and bringing him champagne makes me lose a bit of respect for him...

Depends on what brand champagne was being served...and can an a-g jazz artist afford assistants?

My guess is that he doesn't need to afford them, that they're probably acolytes.

Maybe Ratliff wasn't afforded the space to write an extensive article.....or five covering the details of his conversation with Cecil?

Seems to me that Ratliff had a good deal of space. I'll bet that instead he didn't know what to make of whatever Taylor said and/or thought his readers wouldn't know what to make of it. The lede about the ladies lighting cigarettes and serving Champagne suggests that he needed to plug in something to show that he'd been there. He certainly finds the space to quote Taborn and Iyer.

Again, I've been in such spots, if I'm right about what Ratliff faced. They're a journalist's nightmare. Had a "yup" and "nope" beaut once with Richard Pryor; through a twist of fate I figured out a way to save it. OTOH, I was utterly defeated by two determinedly non-committal types: John Lewis and Benny Carter.

[medjuck]

IIRC Cecil's pretty articulate in "Imagine the Sound". (But that was many years ago.)

[paul secor]

Cecil may have a reputation for being vague, but if you watch the DVD All the Notes or the interview at the end of Cecil Taylor - The Jazz Master Class Series from NYU, he can have a lot to say and can say it in a very interesting and articulate manner. If Ben Ratliff spent five hours conversing with Cecil Taylor and came up with not much, that just may say something about Mr. Ratliff.

[Chuck Nessa]

Cecil reveals more in his vague comments than many. I was bummed the 5 hours of interview, an early "come on" in the piece, turned out to be such a small part of the piece. I wound up wondering if Ratliff was wearing the "5 hours" as a badge of honor and didn't really want to share. This stuff drives me nuts.

[jlhoots]

Ain't NO CT articles in newspapers out here in the "hinterlands" (although there are many compensating features to being here).

Female assistants - hmmmm.

[AllenLowe]

I don't know - I always want to throw a shoe at him when I read interviews with Cecil. He's too self-consciously circular. I do know that his current "manager" is a lady named Ruby something.

[CraigP]

I remember reading a Downbeat cover story interview with Cecil in the mid-70s, right after Silent Tongues came out, that made a big impression on this then-teenager. Let's just say I hadn't had a lot of exposure up til then to more radical ideas.

[brownie]

The main thing AFAIAC is that CT and the Celebration concerts get coverage in The New York Times which is a rather good sign of his status these days!

[Mark Stryker]

I thought the story was artfully done, giving an evocative feel for the kind of personality Taylor is, while also providing an insightful summary of his art for general readers. The piece wasn't meant to be a full profile of Taylor but a look at his music and legacy through the eyes of the pianists who are joining him in the upcoming celebration, while still allowing readers to get a first-hand sense of the man and musician at the center of the story. It's certainly possible that Ratliff went into the initial interview with a different idea about the kind of story he wanted to write and then was forced to call an audible based on what he was actually able to get out of Cecil. Or maybe not. I do know that writing meangingfully about Cecil for a general newspaper readership -- actually for any readership -- is one of the biggest challenges in writing about any musician in any idiom.

Like Larry, I've also been in situations with interview subjects who can be frustratingly impenetrable -- sometimes willfully, but sometimes not. Wayne Shorter and Cornette Colemen come to mind as two guys that are as nice as can be but they just operate on another plane of language and metaphor -- like Cecil, they are Maharishi's of music. In the end, while it's mesmerizing and sometimes revelatory to be in their presence, it can be impossible to quote them directly and extensively in any meaningful way in the context of a newspaper story. They just refuse to speak in direct terms, especially when you try and get them to dig into the technical marrow of the music or untangle their creative process or tell stories about the old days. I spent nearly 5 hours with Ornette once for a profile and it was a serious challenge to find quotable passages, though I needed all of that time to try to get a sense of him and his personality. So much of what I saw, heard and felt shaped the content, structure and descriptions in the story in all kinds of subtle ways, even though he wasn't quoted much per se. I was also lucky in that at one point when I was trying to get a better handle on whatever the hell he really means by the term "harmolodics" he offered to give me a lesson on the stop and got out his alto and literally put it in my hands to play. (I had told him my background was as an alto player.) The point is, that episode gave me a narrative hook that turned into a nice part of the story, but there still wasn't much that was "quotable."

I think Jim's use of the phrase "pimp the upcoming concert series" is unfair. Yes, the series is the news peg for the story -- the event or circumstance that makes a story about Cecil timely, the reason the story is relevant to readers right at this moment. But this story is certainly not defacto marketing copy designed to sell tickets, though, of course, it may have that effect. There is certainly a discussion to be had about how narrow definitions of timeliness have negative consequences when it comes to covering artistic enterprise and merit, and we can also have a discussion about the the symbiotic and/or parasitic relationship between the music press and the music business and the role the media plays, willingly or not, as the marketing arm of the industry. But of all the things this story about Cecil is or is not, I wouldn't call it an advertorial by any stretch.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Mark Stryker