CECIL TAYLOR - At Angelica 2000 Bologna
Angelica Records IDA 042 (Double CD)
Cecil Taylor, piano, voice
Music, poetry and words by Cecil Taylor
Recorded May 10th 2000 at the Teatro Communale di Bologna, Italia and May 11th 2000 at the Palazzo dei Notai, Bologna, Italia during the 10th edition of the AngelicA Festival Internazionale di Musica.
This was the year in which Bologna was elected European Capital of Culture and the AngelicA Festival invited Cecil Taylor to hold a concert, which is the subject of Disc 1. Disc 2 records the proceedings the next day at the Palazzo dei Notai when Taylor gave a public meeting/interview, opening with a statement read by him on the definition of music. This document is issued in its entirety in a booklet with the album.
Cecil Taylor was classically trained, so it may seem surprising that he became a pioneer of free jazz, perhaps the pioneer. Seen as a colossus among the jazz avant-garde, his early incursions into free improvisation preceded those of Ornette Coleman and during the 1950s/60s his music grew further away from the conventional jazz styles of the day, becoming more complex. Saxophonist Jimmy Lyons became his key and most constant associate, with drummer Sunny Murray and this trio formed the essence of the original Cecil Taylor Unit.
Here at AngelicA 10, Cecil Taylor played his kind of jazz, full to overflowing with sensual animation and physicality, but it’s much more complex than that. He was instrumental in familiarising the jazz soundscape with the concept of atonality, in which the music lacks a tonal focus or principal key. He abhorred the fact that critics would often align their criticism of his music only to the atonal, the technical side of his music, when he wanted listeners to hear all of its content, the roots within. He argued that this limitation accentuated only part of the music instead of its totality.
Recognised as a genius in his day, Cecil Taylor changed the face of jazz as a futurist radical might and he did so consistently. It seems probable, on listening to others, that his jazz was way ahead of much of what we might hear today.
This is beautiful stuff and everlasting. Cecil Taylor is the compleat improviser and jazz musician - I could listen to this for hours.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Angelica Records IDA 042 (Double CD)
Cecil Taylor, piano, voice
Music, poetry and words by Cecil Taylor
Recorded May 10th 2000 at the Teatro Communale di Bologna, Italia and May 11th 2000 at the Palazzo dei Notai, Bologna, Italia during the 10th edition of the AngelicA Festival Internazionale di Musica.
This was the year in which Bologna was elected European Capital of Culture and the AngelicA Festival invited Cecil Taylor to hold a concert, which is the subject of Disc 1. Disc 2 records the proceedings the next day at the Palazzo dei Notai when Taylor gave a public meeting/interview, opening with a statement read by him on the definition of music. This document is issued in its entirety in a booklet with the album.
Cecil Taylor was classically trained, so it may seem surprising that he became a pioneer of free jazz, perhaps the pioneer. Seen as a colossus among the jazz avant-garde, his early incursions into free improvisation preceded those of Ornette Coleman and during the 1950s/60s his music grew further away from the conventional jazz styles of the day, becoming more complex. Saxophonist Jimmy Lyons became his key and most constant associate, with drummer Sunny Murray and this trio formed the essence of the original Cecil Taylor Unit.
Here at AngelicA 10, Cecil Taylor played his kind of jazz, full to overflowing with sensual animation and physicality, but it’s much more complex than that. He was instrumental in familiarising the jazz soundscape with the concept of atonality, in which the music lacks a tonal focus or principal key. He abhorred the fact that critics would often align their criticism of his music only to the atonal, the technical side of his music, when he wanted listeners to hear all of its content, the roots within. He argued that this limitation accentuated only part of the music instead of its totality.
Recognised as a genius in his day, Cecil Taylor changed the face of jazz as a futurist radical might and he did so consistently. It seems probable, on listening to others, that his jazz was way ahead of much of what we might hear today.
This is beautiful stuff and everlasting. Cecil Taylor is the compleat improviser and jazz musician - I could listen to this for hours.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
