Cecil Taylor Music

Roswell Rudd is brilliant and it's great to be able to kill two birds with one stone and listen to both Beaver Harris and Sunny Murray on one CD. The highlight of the release is Giuseppi Logan's aptly named "Satan's Dance". It is, well, demonic in its intensity. It is rather strange music. For some reason it made images of a hellish Dixieland inferno pop up in my mind. The Taylor material is good but it was the Rudd material that grabbed me.

Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone. Maybe that's why when the Cecil Taylor portion of "Mixed" was first issued back in the 60s, it was done so as a Gil Evans album! In any event, this is a great place to start if you want to check out Cecil's music, and you get another album's worth of material thrown in for free. The first three tracks of "Mixed" are Cecil's, with an all-star avant garde jazz lineup including Archie Shepp, Jimmy Lyons, Sunny Murray and Roswell Rudd. Speaking of Rudd, tracks 4-7 were originally released in the late 60s as his album "Everywhere." Anyone who enjoys exploratory jazz will find there is nothing mixed about this CD.

This Impulse release documents two distinct sessions: Cecil Taylor (61'-produced by Gil Evans), and Roswell Rudd's 66' release, "Everywhere". The two dates, although recorded five years from each other, meld remarkably well. Concerning the Cecil Taylor music, there are three Taylor compositions that are all challenging, ahead of their time, and even hummable and swinging at times. It represents a transitional period of Cecil's career where he was truly moving more and more "out". However, you don't need to love more noisy jazz to enjoy this gem, just an appreciation of interesting music, an open ear and mind. Check-out "Bulbs" to get an idea of what I'm saying (hummable and swinging). This track is as infectious as any pop tune and has recognizable O. Coleman and Mingus flavors in it. Plus you can't beat the line-up! A young Archie Shepp (tenor sax) with Jimmy Lyons (alto s.), Henry Grimes on bass, and a fledgling Sunny Murray on drums. Ted Curson and Roswell Rudd join in for a avant-super group on the track "Mixed", trumpet and trombone respectively. This Taylor session is absolutely essential for a serious 60's new music/avant-garde/free-jazz collection. As for Rudd's Everywhere session, you have Roswell Rudd on trombone, Giuseppe Logan on flute and bass clarinet, Lewis Worrell and Charlie Haden on upright, Beaver Harris on drums, and both altoists John Tchicai and Robin Kenyetta. no piano. The material includes a Logan tribute to Eric Dolphy ("Satan's Dance"), Bill Harris's "Everywhere", and two originals from Roswell Rudd. Some of the music becomes monotonous at times but there are definately some spectacular moments that make for many rewarding and insightful listenings. Very atmospheric and emotionally charged, reminding me of Alan Shorter's music (ie-"Orgasm" session, or the track "Mephistopheles" on Wayne Shorter's "The All Seeing Eye". Overall, this is a great buy for your money with sessions from both avant-gardist greats: Cecil Taylor and Roswell Rudd. I would recommend it to anyone that likes a more challenging listen. From this free-jazz fan to you: a very satisfying Taylor experience, and one that I will enjoy for a long long time. Give "Mixed" a try!

This musical document represents a significant example of the level to which Africa has influenced European music. The quintessential European instrument, the piano, is here played percussively. The drums are played melodically, and "talk", and create a "soundscape" (witness the shimmering waves created by the cymbals of Mr Jones behind Mr Taylor during his solo on track 6) whilst the saxophone of Mr Redman mimics the human voice so important in African music. The three artists have contributed much to the development of music over the past 40 years. We owe them a debt of gratitude. This is an excellent example of their art. Although conversations prevail, the soliloquy on track two by Mr Jones has an almost perfect structure and is a powerful testimony to Afro-American drumming. We do miss something though. Just as it is a revelation to have witnessed Mr Thelonious Monk "play" the piano, so it is revelatory to visually witness the plasticity, the melding, of Mr Taylor with his instrument and with the music - dance, sculpture and sound interweave to make a more emotionally powerful experience. In the meantime, we will just have to close our eyes and imagine as we listen intently to the music on this CD. Superbly engineered by Jay Newland. Thanks to The Creative Music Institute.

I got this record last Christmas and immediately made a tape of it for my car - I had to listen to it all the time. All three giants sound great, the album has nice liner notes, and I love the Einsteinian notion of "Momentum Space" as it relates to this transformative restructuralist music. Elvin Jones made another wonderful trio album a few years ago with his brother Hank and George Mraz in tribute to his brother Thad. "Momentum Space" has a different kind of beauty. Check it out! : )

Three masters of forward-looking jazz coming together to create....something brilliant.

Okay, fine, sometimes the idea of the "meeting of the masters" can disappoint, but not here. The album, although not a trio album per-se, features brilliant solo work and interaction between the musicians.

What I found particularly interesting is the breaking down of the group into duos for the different compositions. Doing so creates an entirely different world of sound. Redman and Jones w/out Cecil Taylor results in groovy, hip music. Taylor and Jones is this amazing sonic barrage of notes and rhythms (neither instrument is at the forefront, it's great). And so on...

So, yes, this is an album that lives up to the promises on the cover. It is well-worth the investment.

I've been playing this intermixed with Glenn Gould's "Bach's Goldberg Variations", and actually enjoy this more! The first track "Nine" reminds me of atoms (of type Redman, Taylor, and Jones) colliding together in musical space. Very ingenious! All three musicians , although rarely intersecting in the time dimension, create complementary musical space with respect to one another. This was my first major exposure to Cecil Taylor's style of piano, and I must listen to more of him. He and Jones complement each other well, in that I've always thought of Jones as a "lyrical drummer", while Taylor seems to be able to create interesting percussion sounds with his piano.

This album was a surprise when it first appeared: while Cecil Taylor, Dewey Redman & Elvin Jones are all masters of forwardlooking 1960s jazz, one would hardly expect such individual & differently-oriented players to gel together. Jones, despite the enormous complexity of the rhythms & sounds he creates, has typically still preferred to maintain the drums' timekeeping role (having left Coltrane's band, for instance, as Coltrane moved more and more towards completely "free" playing). Taylor, on the other hand, has since the early 1960s become the leading exponent of a highly percussive & rhythmic but freely-measured piano style.

This recording, as most reviewers have noted, is misleadingly packaged as a trio recording, when only the first and sixth tracks (ten and twenty minutes long, respectively) have all three musicians together. I'm inclined to think this not necessarily a bad thing: the shorter of the two tracks, "Nine", is an amazing confrontation, perhaps the best thing on the album; the 20-minute track, "Is", is I think the one weak track on the disc, episodic & rambling. It's telling that on "Nine" Jones elects to play in time, while on "Is" he tries for free-tempo playing.

But with the exception of "Is"--which anyway has its moments too--the rest of this album is first-rate. There's a fine, melodic drum solo by Jones; a nice solo piece by Taylor; a brilliant duet between Redman & Jones; and a good duo between Taylor & Jones. A brief Redman solo ends the disc--it's only 49 seconds & is sufficiently good I wish there were more. So, despite my reservations about the one (longest) track, there's plenty on here that deserves a listen.

It's going to be a little hard to find this review (not to mention the CD itself), since the album is listed under "CT: The Quartet" and even on the CD itself Evan Parker gets top billing. An odd thing, given that this was clearly a Cecil Taylor date -- actually the middle concert from the 3-day "Total Taylor" festival in Germany in 1990, sandwiched between a solo concert (Double Holy House) and an 11-piece sax-heavy ensemble performance (Melancholy).

CT: The Quartet consists of CT, Evan Parker (tenor and soprano sax), Barry Guy (bass), and Tony Oxley (drums), and "Nailed" consists of two extended numbers, quite simply titled "First" and "Last" at 52 and 25 minutes respectively. Aside from their order, the two numbers are mainly differentiated by Parker sticking to tenor on "First" and soprano on "Last."

"First" has a typically casual start, with Parker's tenor exploring different short phrases over Cecil's rumbling at the lower register and sparse embellishments by Oxley. Soon enough though, things come to a boil, with Parker going spastic, Cecil pushing the pace and throwing in his requisite thundering chords, and the rhythm section holding it all together. Parker steps back from time to time, leaving for plenty of trio work (my preferred setting for CT) sounding at times like CT's Feel Trio. As usual for this era of CT's work, there are times when the music gets a little spread out and relaxed, but overall this date is a high-energy bash with non-stop free-jazz machinations.

"Last" starts with about 3 minutes of explorative warm-up with CT at the piano, but then he and the rhythym section get into a dense and raucous interplay, with Oxley's cymbals providing the perfect accompaniment to Cecil's playing, and Barry Guy going nuts with a bow making his bass sound almost like a saxophone. Cecil is Cecil, with his typical chordal slamming and mad-cap runs. Parker gets thrown into the mix just past the 10-minute mark with his soprano blending in like a songbird on acid, and the four of them making music that sounds like some alien tongue. Parker fades out near the end and the trio gradually slows down like a train coming to a slow-rolling stop.

To me, this is easily Cecil's best quartet work -- quite similar to the more recent Iridium dates, but Cecil's work is mainly differentiated by his sidemen, and Parker's playing here trumps Harri Sjöström's. Though heresy among CT fans, I've never cared for Jimmy Lyon's playing, so for me, this is really the CT quartet date to get.

Awesome show with all-star line up: Cecil Taylor, Buell Neidlinger, Archie Shepp, Clark Terry, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Charles Davis, Billy Higgins et al

Produced by Nat Hentoff.

Songs are: O.P. (Neidlinger); Cell Walk for Celeste (Taylor); Cindy's Main Mood (Neidlinger, Taylor & Higgins); Things Ain't What They Used To Be (Ellington)

Show dates were 1/9-10/1961.

Several years ago, it was very difficult to locate Candid jazz CDs, the label that critic Nat Hentoff founded nearly fifty years ago. This was a real shame because some classic recordings, including Booker Little's "Out Front" and Max Roach's "We Insist!: Freedom Now Suite," were on this label. I am happy to report that it was not because the discs were being deleted, but because many were (slowly) being remastered. Now some of the seminal early recordings of iconoclastic pianist Cecil Taylor are resurfacing, like "The World of C.T." (see my review) and "New York City R&B." It is my opinion that these albums are two of the best in the Taylor discography, not to mention some of the great new jazz recordings of the early 60s. "NYC R&B" recorded over two successive days in January 1961, is basically a quartet date, with Archie Shepp on tenor sax, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and either Dennis Charles or Billy Higgins on drums, performing on the first three tracks. Then things get wild on the final cut, Duke Ellington's "Things Ain't What They Used To Be," as the horn section is expanded to include Clark Terry on trumpet, Roswell Rudd on trombone, Steve Lacy on soprano sax, and Charles Davis on bari sax, to masterful effect. True to its title, this track is a launching point for the multi-layered sound worlds Taylor would explore later in the decade and throughout his storied and controversial career. I am delighted that with this CD available once again, we can return to New York City to hear Taylor's unique brand of "R&B."