The 1980s were initially not Cecil Taylor’s best years, although he did release some wonderful albums in the beginning (e.g., It Is In The Brewing Luminous and Calling It The 8th). But after the death of his long-time collaborator, saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, in 1986, he had to look for new challenges - and found them mainly outside the US. In 1988, he spent a month in Japan, giving concerts and workshops. In late spring and early summer, he was in Berlin at the invitation of Free Music Productions (FMP) for four weeks. There were concerts, workshops, and readings, too. Taylor played with American and European musicians, with black and white ones. In addition, there were several concerts in New York. In late summer, he toured all over Europe; he estimated that at that time 90% of his concerts took place on that continent. It was a real mammoth tour, during which he was also looking for a drummer who suited his playing style. One date took him to the Outside In Festival in Crawley, UK, on September 3, 1988, where he met Tony Oxley again. Seven weeks earlier, the two had played together for the first time as part of the FMP events, which is documented on the album Leaf Palm Hand (FMP, 1989).
In Taylor’s music the grand piano becomes a percussion instrument, as evidenced by the well-known phrase that Taylor regarded the keys as “88 tuned drums”. The touch of his playing repeats an archetypal human experience - perhaps the oldest instrumental experience of all, according to Swiss Taylor expert Meinrad Buholzer. With each stroke, the inner rhythm emerges, the heartbeat is released and passed on. The acoustic effect arises where the stroke encounters resistance, at its limit, where the physical transforms into sound, takes hold, enables communication, Buholzer says. Taylor’s playing is exemplary in this respect. He passes on his rhythm, he always pushes himself to his limits. In his music, despite its density, he always leaves space, empty spaces that allow his fellow musicians and the audience to complement his ideas and think them further. And this is where Tony Oxley comes in: Oxley believed that Taylor would benefit from a lighter, higher-pitched percussionist, and with textures that acoustically surround his group of cymbals, cowbells, wood blocks, and bongo drums (played with sticks), his equipment sounds more like Varèse than a standard trap kit, a sound that permeates Taylor’s staccato piano without drowning it out. Although Oxley contributes accompaniment and embellishments, the two tend to occupy different but complementary spaces, with countercurrents, collisions, and temporary configurations, swirling particles that never quite stabilize.
This becomes clear from the very first second of the 36-minute title track on Flashing Spirits. Taylor’s concise phrases are accompanied by Oxley very poignantly. Above all, it’s his snare drumming that complements Taylor’s notes in the beginning. At first, Oxley doesn’t even try to keep up with Taylor’s energetic playing, but instead adds pointillistic accents here and there. Then, after about six minutes, he picks up the tempo out of nowhere, driving Taylor forward. From that moment on, there’s no stopping them for almost 30 minutes. Oxley’s subtle approach, combined with Taylor’s supersonic technique, is like a musical shower of shooting stars. The pianist’s strict, precise phrasing, which always oscillates between jazz and blues traditions and European classical modernism, is brought out even more strongly by Oxley’s micro-subdivisions.
What is more is the fact that Taylor has always understood his art as bridge building. For him bridges, especially those by Santiago Calatrava, were the perfect combination of statics and aesthetics, of functionality and elegance, the art of the supporting pillar. In almost all of his music there has always been an architecture of sound in which statics and aesthetics must be in harmony. The rhythmic pillars are the supporting elements of the music, the arcs of free improvisation, which can also be recognized in this recording - in the long-winded arcs of the right hand, supported by the clusters and block chords of the left. In the course of the piece Taylor merges with the piano, becoming one with it. The sound seems to come directly from him. Oxley, in turn, picks up on this sound and expands it, almost doubling it. The drum rolls on the kits push the music forward, shift it, make it stumble, or slow down the tempo (after 31 minutes). Taylor’s and Oxley’s musical bridge begins at the starting point, rises above the water, swings boldly upward with magnificent embellishments, veers to the right and left at times, and finally arrives at the other shore. In my mind’s eye, the improvisation resembles the Sultan Abdul Halim Muadzam Shah Bridge.
So, in the end, what is so special about Cecil Taylor’s music? Why is even a recording from 1988 still so extraordinary today? His musical poetry is an attempt to escape the compulsion to the obvious, the predictable, the banal, the conformity, and the comfort of everyday life (to quote Meinrad Buholzer* once again). Over the years, Taylor’s music has not undergone any process of wear and tear; it has never become fashionable and can never be misused as mere background music. It is music that has consistently refused to be commercialized to this day.
* If you read German I recommend Meinrad Buholzer: Always A Pleasure; Begegnungen mit Cecil Taylor (self-released, 2018)
Flashing Spirits is available as a limited CD and as a download. You can listen to the album and buy it here: https://ceciltaylor-bam.bandcamp.com/album/flashing-spirits
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