CECIL TAYLOR - Complete Live at the Café Montmartre
Solar 4569969
Cecil Taylor: piano; Jimmy Lyons: alto sax; Sunny Murray: drums; Kurt Lindstrom: bass (on 3 bonus tracks).
Recorded November 23,1962
It is a well rehearsed story that some of the major innovators of modern jazz were, in the early 1960s, struggling to get recording contracts or gigs in America. This led players like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor to try their hand across the Atlantic. These players found a particularly warm reception in Scandinavia, and live recordings from any of these in Sweden or Denmark are well worth looking out for. This nicely packaged reissue captures Taylor’s performances at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre, with three bonus tracks recorded at Stockholm’s Golden Circle. For fans of Taylor, the material (with the exception of the bonus tracks which have not been previously released) will be familiar from the Live! At the Café Montmartre and Nefertiti: the beautiful one has come. This set comes with a booklet with the sleeve notes from these previous releases, featuring Erik Weidermann’s insightful comments on the performances and the developments of Taylor’s playing.
The line up for much of the recording features a trio of piano, drums and sax. Even when he joins them, bass player Lindstrom seems to be mixed very low and to be somewhat outside the rolling sheets of noise that the trio are generating. Murray’s drumming is phenomenal and, as Weidermann points out, these recordings highlight “that decomposition of the traditional jazz beat which has made Sonny Murray the most thoroughly innovating jazz drummer since Kenny Clarke and Max Roach in the forties.” Without the bass, you might assume that Murray’s role would be to provide the propulsion for the music, but Taylor’s aggressive lines force the pace for all of the pieces. This leaves Murray a freedom to embellish, fill and counteract the rhythm. The live recording is crystal clear and the cymbals crash across the music with a freshness that still sounds like the future of jazz.
It is interesting to note that the Taylor trio performed with Albert Ayler (on Danish television but not, I think, in the recording studio – there is a recording of the Cecil Taylor trio with Ayler playing ‘Four’ which is on a compilation called Holy Ghost and, of course, Murray went on to be a key member of Ayler’s groups), and that Taylor had seen the John Coltrane Quartet playing in Copenhagen the night before these sessions were recorded. Indeed, the track ‘What’s New?’ (two versions of which are recorded here) had been part of the Coltrane repertoire. The bulk of the performances centre on ‘D Trad, that’s what’ and ‘Nefertiti, the beautiful one has come’; both of which have two versions on the CD. In the different versions of these tracks, Taylor begins almost hesitantly, with Murray providing fills around the piano runs, before the trio takes off and works the pieces. The tension in the melodic lines and the fractured rhythms caused many of his contemporaries to question Taylor’s style. In the sleeve notes, there is a quote from Taylor in 1994, which begins with him saying “I don’t know what jazz is. And what most people think of as jazz I Don’t think that’s what it is at all.” The merging of modernist approaches to piano playing while retaining the swing of jazz characterises Taylor’s style and these recordings capture this as a fully-fledged and complete aesthetic.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Solar 4569969
Cecil Taylor: piano; Jimmy Lyons: alto sax; Sunny Murray: drums; Kurt Lindstrom: bass (on 3 bonus tracks).
Recorded November 23,1962
It is a well rehearsed story that some of the major innovators of modern jazz were, in the early 1960s, struggling to get recording contracts or gigs in America. This led players like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor to try their hand across the Atlantic. These players found a particularly warm reception in Scandinavia, and live recordings from any of these in Sweden or Denmark are well worth looking out for. This nicely packaged reissue captures Taylor’s performances at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre, with three bonus tracks recorded at Stockholm’s Golden Circle. For fans of Taylor, the material (with the exception of the bonus tracks which have not been previously released) will be familiar from the Live! At the Café Montmartre and Nefertiti: the beautiful one has come. This set comes with a booklet with the sleeve notes from these previous releases, featuring Erik Weidermann’s insightful comments on the performances and the developments of Taylor’s playing.
The line up for much of the recording features a trio of piano, drums and sax. Even when he joins them, bass player Lindstrom seems to be mixed very low and to be somewhat outside the rolling sheets of noise that the trio are generating. Murray’s drumming is phenomenal and, as Weidermann points out, these recordings highlight “that decomposition of the traditional jazz beat which has made Sonny Murray the most thoroughly innovating jazz drummer since Kenny Clarke and Max Roach in the forties.” Without the bass, you might assume that Murray’s role would be to provide the propulsion for the music, but Taylor’s aggressive lines force the pace for all of the pieces. This leaves Murray a freedom to embellish, fill and counteract the rhythm. The live recording is crystal clear and the cymbals crash across the music with a freshness that still sounds like the future of jazz.
It is interesting to note that the Taylor trio performed with Albert Ayler (on Danish television but not, I think, in the recording studio – there is a recording of the Cecil Taylor trio with Ayler playing ‘Four’ which is on a compilation called Holy Ghost and, of course, Murray went on to be a key member of Ayler’s groups), and that Taylor had seen the John Coltrane Quartet playing in Copenhagen the night before these sessions were recorded. Indeed, the track ‘What’s New?’ (two versions of which are recorded here) had been part of the Coltrane repertoire. The bulk of the performances centre on ‘D Trad, that’s what’ and ‘Nefertiti, the beautiful one has come’; both of which have two versions on the CD. In the different versions of these tracks, Taylor begins almost hesitantly, with Murray providing fills around the piano runs, before the trio takes off and works the pieces. The tension in the melodic lines and the fractured rhythms caused many of his contemporaries to question Taylor’s style. In the sleeve notes, there is a quote from Taylor in 1994, which begins with him saying “I don’t know what jazz is. And what most people think of as jazz I Don’t think that’s what it is at all.” The merging of modernist approaches to piano playing while retaining the swing of jazz characterises Taylor’s style and these recordings capture this as a fully-fledged and complete aesthetic.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
