Cecil Taylor Explains It All

[Hardbopjazz]

by Patrick Ambrose

Pianist Cecil Taylor stormed onto the New York City club scene in the 1950s, shaking the foundations of modern music with what would become known as free jazz. A conversation with the master.

As the lights of Rose Theater dim, a drummer unleashes a series of brooding pulsations, buffeting the tom-toms in time with the entrance of the elusive Henry Grimes, a preeminent bassist who until recently had been away from the music scene for more than three decades. Impeccably dressed and with a shock of white hair, Grimes strides on stage with a violin to thunderous applause and scratches out a gritty sequence of notes, scraping against the placid resonance of the soothing beat. Pheeroan akLaff’s palpitations have put the audience in a trance.

Offstage, someone howls and there’s a sound like fluttering sheets of corrugated steel. Suddenly, a dancer whirls into the scene, whacking a cymbal with a mallet and spewing guttural utterances as he spins toward a grand piano at center stage. He reaches into the case and plucks the strings. A faint ray of light illuminates the face of pianist and NEA Jazz Master Cecil Taylor, wearing a black skullcap. He reads something in an unfamiliar language, and then begins to play, his agile fingers sprinting furiously across the keys as he stitches together a complex assortment of rhythms. His energy is stunning, and at one point, he’s banging the keys with his forearms and elbows, while Grimes, now on bass, threads akLaff’s beats with simmering serpentine runs. The trio is tight throughout the performance, and the crashing polyrhythmic waves of sustained intensity eventually taper into a palliative high-end melody—an ebb and flow in the two-part score. When the piece ends, the audience is drained, but ecstatic. Hoots and hollers fill the auditorium. Adoring fans give Taylor a bouquet of red roses. The maestro receives two curtain calls for his unprecedented performance.

 

More. 

https://themorningnews.org/article/cecil-taylor-explains-it-all

 

 

[mjazzg]

Thanks for posting, a very enjoyable read