By
Colin Green
These two albums fill some gaps and broaden our understanding of Cecil
Taylor’s music-making during 1976, in each case with a “bonus” from the
previous decade. Despite being rather disparate compilations, we can hear
some of the connections that run through Taylor’s work and lend continuity
to his musical vision.
Cecil Taylor – Mysteries:Untitled (Black Sun Music, 2018)
****(*)
The chief attraction of this album is an almost 50 minute, previously
unreleased solo performance by Taylor given at New York University in
November 1976 as part of the Bösendorfer Festival, a benefit series for the
Kitchen performance centre. His previous solo recital that year had been in
August at Moosham Castle in the Lungau region of Salzburg during an
open-air festival, subsequently released as
Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) (Enja, 1977). Taylor had
come across a Bösendorfer piano in the basement of the University of
Wisconsin while he was artist-in-residence in 1971 but the Alpine concert
was his first recorded performance playing the instrument, which may have
provided connections with the New York festival three months later. Built
in Vienna, a Bösendorfer remained his favoured piano with the Imperial
Grand model extending the usual 88 keys to 97 to provide a full 8 octaves,
the somewhat spooky sounding extra keys in the bass coloured entirely black
and covered by a removable panel on earlier builds. Even when the lowest
notes are not used – and it’s unclear how often Taylor employed them – more
importantly those additional strings, combined with the huge frame and
uniquely tailored body, add a sympathetic resonance and rich undertones
producing what he described as a mellow lower register. The Bösendorfer was
also preferred by the classical and jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda with whom
Taylor played at the Austrian festival: ‘Begegnung auf Moosham’ on
Nachricht vom Lande (Brain, 1976). It had been at Gulda’s request
that MPS installed an Imperial Grand in its studio at Villingen on which
Taylor later recorded the seminal
Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!
(MPS, 1981) in September 1980.
As noted in Ekkehard Jost’s illuminating essay,
Instant Composing as Body Language, “for Taylor, the type and
quality of his instrument is an essential component of his technique; it
comprises, along with the technique itself, a cornerstone of his musical
message” which is one of the reasons why, where possible, he asked for long
rehearsal sessions with the piano before a concert. A Bösendorfer is known
for having distinct tonal qualities in its different registers, unlike the
more integrated sound of other pianos, something that would have appealed
to Taylor’s stratified conception of the instrument and its potential for
multiple voicings. In this performance he explores a vivid palette with
relish as his hands dance furiously at opposite ends of the keyboard. Warm
layers of veiled resonance open and close the recital, fulsome chords sound
out in the bass and contrast with dizzying, toccata-like passages that gain
a crystalline sparkle as they race into the upper register.
Beneath the sheer exuberance of his playing however, is a cool intelligence
and a technical understanding that was hard won. Take rhythm for example –
for Taylor this is not a matter of an underpinning regularity but something
that becomes a generative power in its own right, a motion from within and
inextricably linked to his motifs. Typically, the smallest unit dictates
the pulse of the material, his rapid fingerwork multiplying small values
rather than dividing larger ones so that rhythm turns into an energy source
having a particular density and momentum. Basic patterns remain
recognisable, but he augments or contracts disrupting their flow as they
spread outward: splintered, juxtaposed, intertwined, caught in the pull of
competing forces and giving his music its distinctive vitality.
I’ve written about these antiphonies
previously
– staccato judders against arpeggiated ripples, broken clusters
interrupting runs that snake across the keyboard, pearly clarity then a
haze of trills. Over time Taylor’s structural sense increased without
losing any of his spontaneity, introducing long-range correspondences and
an attention to recurrence and renewal. Ideas are introduced often in pairs
as a call and response using contrasting figures in different registers.
They shape and modify one another in a series of ricochets and chain
reactions, sometimes by a sort of seepage and osmosis as they veer and
vacillate eventually to dissolve, reappearing later in new formations. As a
result, the ear senses familiar elements but their interaction and
trajectory are unpredictable. Instead of a monodirectional thrust we have a
multidimensional process of rotation, reflection and reversal never to be
grasped in totality – not so much a mosaic of sounds as a Rubik’s cube –
which makes for demanding, though absorbing, listening. Throughout this
recital we hear Taylor’s teeming imagination at its most creative and
highly addictive best.
After a break between tracks that should have been longer the bonus items
are the three works recorded in 1961 which appeared on the Gil Evans
curated
Into The Hot (Impulse!, 1962) performed by Taylor with
Jimmy Lyons (alto), Archie Shepp (tenor) Henry Grimes (double bass) and
Sunny Murray (drums), later also released on the album
Mixed
(Impulse!, 1998) and various compilations of Taylor’s early music. These
pieces were the first recordings with Lyons, who became his closest
collaborator, a musical partnership that continued until the saxophonist’s
death in 1986.
Taylor was inspired by Ellington, not just in his piano playing but for the
organisation and sonorities heard in the big band recordings from the
1940s. He wanted to get colours out of sounds the way Ellington did. These
pieces contain in embryonic form the articulations and harmonic
displacements that were to play such a fertile role in his ensemble music,
Taylor’s piano injecting spurts of hairpin energy into a kaleidoscopic
succession of jump-cuts and superimpositions which still sound fresh. On
‘Mixed’, the quintet is expanded to a septet with Ted Curson (trumpet) and
Roswell Rudd (trombone) in voicings of muted and glowing brass around a
propulsive central section. The pungent melody of the opening and close was
to be reworked as ‘Enter Evening (Soft Line Structure)’ on
Unit Structures and ‘Caseworks’ on Taylor and the Art Ensemble’s
Thelonious Sphere Monk: Dreaming of The Masters Vol.2 (DIW, 1991).
Cecil Taylor – On Air 1976 (Lo-Light Records, 2019) ***(*)
Taylor’s best known albums
Unit Structures and
Conquistador!, both on Blue Note from May and October 1966, might
also be his most significant in terms of larger groups. Some of the
compositions had long histories – three of the pieces on
Unit Structures had been played in an advanced form by his quintet
at the Newport festival in July the previous year, and according to
double-bassist Alan Silva there were four months of rehearsals before the
Unit Structures session. Certain material also provided a
continuing resource, a repertoire of charts for assorted navigations
usually under different names. The harmonic and rhythmic cells of ‘Steps’
from
Unit Structures are recast and elaborated for the title track
on
Conquistador! – or perhaps more accurately, they both spring
from the same core components – and are also the foundation for later
pieces such as ‘Taht' on
Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) (Soul
Note, 1985). ‘With (Exit)’ from
Conquistador! was also drawn on
subsequently and plays a prominent role in the framework for the two epic
improvisations of the European Orchestra on
Alms/Tiergarten (Spree) (FMP, 1989) from Berlin ’88. Ben Young’s
forthcoming biography of Taylor may shed further light on such matters.
The present album, which so far as I can tell is only available via
Internet streaming on
Spotify
and
Apple Music
, is taken from three radio broadcasts, two from 1976. Working through them
chronologically, the final item is a recording of Taylor’s quartet with
Lyons, Andrew Cyrille (drums) and Sam Rivers (tenor and soprano saxophones,
flute) which played in the U.S. and Europe from February 1969 to February
1970. Off-air recordings of the European tour in October and November have
circulated on the Internet for some time, from Stockholm, Berlin, Stuttgart
and the current performance at De Doelen Concert Hall, Rotterdam,
previously released on vinyl as
In Europe (Jazz Connoisseur).
Based on the available recordings each performance by this quartet was set
in motion the same way, using the segments of ‘Steps’ in rousing fanfares
and cascades which are restated from time to time, spawning lengthy
improvisations usually titled (as here) ‘Fragments of a Dedication to Duke
Ellington’. Notwithstanding the stirring start, this quartet is a
problematic combination due to an uneasy fit between Rivers and a trio
which by this point had become something of a self-contained unit. Whereas
Lyons engages in tight interplay with Taylor, displaying a firm melodic
logic – a rapport they’d established over several years – during Rivers’
solos he seems largely lost relying on vague textural meanderings rather
than motivic invention, unable to accommodate for more than relatively
brief spells the superheated pace that characterised Taylor’s music during
this period. As the driving force Taylor makes no adjustments for him even
though three long solos, one on each of Rivers’ instruments, must have been
taxing. It doesn’t help that the recording is poor with a skewed balance so
that only Taylor’s piano emerges from the fog with any real definition.
There’s better sound, though still a musical mismatch, on the one official
recording of the quartet taken from performances in July 1969 at Fondation
Maeght, St. Paul de Vence near Nice:
Nuits de la Fondation Maeght, Vols. 1 – 3 (Shandar, 1971). Footage
of rehearsals the day before the two nights can be seen in the French TV
programme
Lìnvité du Dimanche
.
From 1970, outside his teaching activities, Taylor’s group work was once
more primarily as a trio with Lyons and Cyrille, occasionally with bass,
again using ‘Steps’ to provide the initial ingredients for the development
of each set:
Akisakila - Cecil Taylor Unit in Japan (Trio, 1973)
and
Spring of Two Blue-J's (Unit Core, 1974). In early 1976 new
blood and broader perspectives were introduced in a quintet with Lyons, a
young David S. Ware (tenor), Raphé Malik (trumpet) and Marc Edwards
(drums). The recordings in this collection are the second set from Michigan
State University at Ann Arbor, broadcast by WCBN-FM (previously available
as
Michigan State University, April 15th 1976 (Hi Hat, 2015) and
just over an hour transmitted by Radio Stadt from the two hour show at
Bremen in July, which was new to me. (The quintet’s concert from the
Yugoslavian Jazz Festival, Ljubljana in June was released as
Dark to Themselves (Enja, 1976)).
The Michigan set suggests that greater mobility and more generous spaces
were available in this ensemble. ‘Wavelets’ is divided into three parts.
After a short drum solo Part 2 is an impassioned, ballad-like duet with
Taylor pounding out thick chords as accompaniment to Ware’s rasping tenor,
merging into Part 3 with piano, alto and drums. The ballad returns on
trumpet and Taylor’s delicate arpeggios, crumbles but is finally restored.
‘Petals’, announced by Taylor, is for the whole quintet and uses a riff
taken from ‘Steps’ in fruity horn unisons over the piano’s stabbing
cross-play. Both become more elaborate as solo and group textures overlap,
the motif remaining a telling presence.
There are two lengthy pieces from Bremen, in superior sound and with a
better piano. Once again, on ‘Winds Alight Stepping Silver, Part 1’ there’s
a focus on sub-groupings and graduated sound Like players in an unknown
drama they combine in duos and trios with commentaries and embellishments
instead of solos and frequent changes of pace, ending in a searing
crescendo. Part 2 introduces music of near stasis: prismatic chords and a
faltering melody are opened out slowly, punctuated by moments of silence,
drum rolls and strange taps. The quintet then launches into a version of
‘Steps’, the piano/ensemble dialogue leading into ever more complex
excursions by Taylor, urged on by Edwards’ drums, peaking at molten glow
and bringing in the rest of the band for a full-on rendition of the theme.
As heard here, in its sectional diversity and variety of colours this group
looks back to Taylor’s work of 1966, something he explored with even
greater success in his 1978 sextet, which for the curious might be a good
place to move onto next. I recommend Phil Freeman’s essay
The Unit: Cecil Taylor in 1978
as an introduction.
