Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor (born 15 or March 25, 1929 in New York) is an American jazz pianist, composer and poet. He is regarded as one of the great inspirational personalities of freely improvised jazz ( along with the more familiar Ornette Coleman ).

Life

At age six, he began at the urging of his mother taking piano lessons. He then studied in New York and 1947-1951 at the New England Conservatory (among others at Henry Cowell ). After early beginnings in R & B and swing bands at the beginning of the 1950s ( at about Hot Lips Page and Johnny Hodges ) he founded in 1956 his own band with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, bassist Buell Neidlinger and drummer Dennis Charles. His first published in Transition 1956 panel Jazz Advance is now regarded as an innovation in which he already Freedoms shows that would later become his trademark as an exceptional pianist Taylor is known for its extremely energetic, also form-fitting style of play and his extraordinary complex art of improvisation, which often includes cluster and difficult polyrhythmic structures. His art is based on both the achievements of contemporary music and modern jazz (especially Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano ) and on the West African percussion music. After Joachim -Ernst Berendt is " actually Overwhelming " at his improvisations " in the physical force with which he plays ."

Projects in the 1960s brought him into contact with John Coltrane and Archie Shepp. Despite recognition in the Down Beat poll he had American audiences initially unsuccessful and had to work as a dishwasher. Gil Evans Taylor offered the opportunity to make his music on the album Into the Hot (1961 ) to present. The largest contributors to his musical development was his umformierte ensemble with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons ( from 1961 until his death in 1986) and drummers like Sunny Murray, with the Taylor from 1962 to 1963 went on tour in Europe for the first time and received greater recognition of his audience. Within this group, which occurred without bassist, the musicians frequently developed new, highly expressive forms of ensemble playing. Instead of Murray then played Andrew Cyrille in this Unit. In the early 1970s Taylor began with piano solo performances (Air Above Mountains ( Buildings Within), 1976) and took several teaching positions at the American academy. His concerts have included increasingly theatrical, performative elements. He wrote poems, which he recited in the context of his concerts; also he performed with Max Roach, and even with Mary Lou Williams.

After the death of Lyons, Taylor turned to the smaller trio and collaborated with bassist William Parker, with whom he played in the early 1990s along with Tony Oxley at the Feel Trio. In addition, he has directed numerous projects large bands. His concerts in Berlin from 1988 to 1999 were largely published by the German label FMP, documenting the achievements in interaction with European improvisers such as Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Peter Kowald, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger or.

In recent years he was touring with Oxley and trumpeter Bill Dixon. Most of his recordings of recent decades published small European labels, except the rather unusual album Momentum Space ( with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones) on Verve / Gitanes. The classical label Bridge published his plate Algonquin, a 1998 recorded in the Library of Congress duet with violinist Mat Maneri.

Awards

In 1991 he was MacArthur Fellow. The very early album Looking Ahead (1958 ) was recorded in 1998 in the list of " 100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening )" by The Wire. In 2013 he received the Kyoto Prize was awarded.

Documentary

The elaborate and inclined toward work of filmmaker Christopher Felver from the California Sausalito owed ​​to the 72 -minute documentary Cecil Taylor: All the Notes ( USA 2004 ), who, playing instruments for the camera- shy and interview- averse pianists in self-reports and philosophizing maps. In ten years of persistent, unobtrusive monitoring, the camera always with you, he allowed himself to be seduced Enter information about yourself. The film had its European premiere in 2005 at the " Total Music Meeting" in Kreuzberg Berlinischen gallery.

Discography (selection)

• The World of Cecil Taylor, 1960
• New York City R & B, 1961
• Jazz Composer's Orchestra: Communications ( with Michael Mantler and other ), 1968
• The Great Concert ( identical to Nuits de la Fondation Maeght ), 1969
• Cecil Taylor & Mary Lou Williams: Embraced, 1977
• Cecil Taylor Unit, 1978
• Cecil Taylor & Max Roach: Historic Concert, 1979
• Fly! Fly! Fly!, 1980
• Cecil Taylor segment II / Orchestra of two Continents, 1984
• Live in Vienna, 1987
• Tzotzil Mummers Tzotzil, 1987
• Pleistocene with water, 1988 ( with Derek Bailey )
• Remembrance, 1988 ( with Louis Moholo )
• Leaf Palm Hand, 1988 ( with Tony Oxley )
• Looking ( The Feel Trio ), 1989
• The Light of Corona, 1996
• The Willisau Concert, 2000

Collection

• The Complete Candid Recordings of Cecil Taylor and Buell Neidlinger (1960 /61) - ( Mosaic 1989) - 6 LPs, 4 CDs with Archie Shepp, Charles Dennis, Steve Lacy, Charles Davis, Clark Terry, Roswell Rudd, Billy Higgins

Quotes

"Improvisation is a tool of refinement, an attempt to capture the > dark < instinct. "

" The pianist and pioneer of modern jazz ... lined barrel to barrel, then abruptly changes the tempo, throws himself into wild cluster, piled them on complex sound structures and finally it increases in maximum intensity, only to immediately to crumble again, zerplätschern to leave. Taylor's concerts are still decades special experiences. They are equipped with a deep sense of dramaturgy, which precludes any strong-arm tactics, which is Taylor angedichtet again and again. "

" The Filzhämmer the mighty wing transformed under the fingers, palms, elbows and forearms in the drums of the Dogon from the Niger bend and into the baby Dodds, drums legend from New Orleans. Its quite meditative beginning in Ashmumniem drives soon to a rabid compaction of the material. The sound is as it were to the metal on an anvil, and Cecil Taylor it shapes blow by blow. His fist is the hammer that rushing on the keys. The mastery of glissandi and clusters has the rather delicate membered Americans developed into a highly subtle and vital " spanking art ". "