Word: cecill
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Perhaps the ultimate example of the nuclear energy of Taylor's playing is the 1969 album The Great Concert of Cecil Taylor (airing on WHRB at around 2:00 a.m.), where one composition lasts for over two hours, taking up six sides of an LP box set. Not recommended for the faint of heart...
...earliest recordings that will be broadcast during the orgy, those from the period 1955-1960, Cecil Taylor sounds approximately like a jazz pianist on acid. He performs with the standard format of a jazz combo: piano, bass, drums, and a hornman, in this case, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. The group records several versions of tunes from the standard jazz repertoire. Hearing Taylor perform the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn composition "Johnny Come Lately" has almost the shock value that hearing Jimi Hendrix's version of "The Star Spangled Banner" must have had ten years later. The familiar jazzman's repertoire turns...
...saxophonist Jimmy Lyons is startling. These musicians are thinking so fast! On a recording such as the 1966 album Conquistador (airing on WHRB around 11:00 p.m.), the group produces music as a seamless whole. It is for this reason that Taylor chose to name his groups "The Cecil Taylor Unit," which he takes to mean, "a community of men feeding each other, relating to each other, and speaking to each other in musical, architectural sounds which have been passed on to them." The music on an album like Conquistador is not a partnership of equals, however, as Taylor clearly...
...Cecil Taylor always felt the injustice of his financial situation. While a chamber musician recording the standard repertoire of classical music over and over again could support himself and his family quite nicely in the postwar years, a true innovator like Taylor had to support himself by odd jobs--he sold everything from records to deli sandwiches. However, he had predicted early on that he would eventually earn the salary of a decent chamber musician. By the 1970s, with growing recognition in Europe and Japan, this prediction finally came true...
...WHRB's Cecil Taylor Orgy* is a chance to experience almost the effect of hearing a full live performances. It will leave you not merely breathless, but just plain screwed up for a long time.Photo Courtesy of WHRB...