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Biography
Infobox musical artist|name = Cecil Taylor|image = CecilTaylor.jpg|caption = Cecil Taylor playing in his apartment in the 1960s|image_size =|background = non_vocal_instrumentalist|birth_name = Cecil Percival Taylor|alias =|birth_date = Birth date and age|1929|3|25|mf=y|death_date =|origin = New York City |instrument = Piano |genre = Avant-garde jazz |occupation = Bandleader , composer |years_active = 1956& ndash;present ||label = Transition Blue Note Freedom Records|Freedom Hathut|Hat Hut Enja Records FMP (Free Music Production)|FMP ||associated_acts = Steve Lacy , Jimmy Lyons , Archie Shepp , Albert Ayler , Buell Neidlinger , Alan Silva , William Parker (musician)|William Parker , Sunny Murray , Andrew Cyrille , Tony Oxley |website = http://www.ceciltaylor-art.com|current_members =|past_members = Cecil Percival Taylor (born March 25, 1929, in New York City ) is an United States|American pianist and poet.Yanow, Scott (2008). Allmusic|class=artist|id=p7662/biography|pure_url=yes "Cecil Taylor biography", AllMusic . Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz . His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms . His piano technique has been likened to percussion , for example described as "eighty-eight tuned drums" (referring to the number of keys on a standard piano),cite book | author=Wilmer, Val | title=As Serious As Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz | publisher=Quartet | year=1977|isbn=0-7043-3164-0|page=45 and also to Art Tatum 's.cite web | url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2005/jan/21/jazz.shopping1 | title=Cecil Taylor, One Too Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye | accessdate=Mar. 26, 2011 | last=Fordham | first=John | date=Jan. 21, 2005 | publisher= The Guardian | quote=Taylor plays the piano ... like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings ...
Early life
Taylor began playing piano at age six and studied at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory . After first steps in rhythm and blues|R& B and Swing (genre)|swing -styled small groups in the early 1950s, he formed his own band with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1956.
Taylor's first recording, Jazz Advance , featured Lacy and was released in 1956. It is described by Richard Cook|Cook and Brian Morton (Scottish writer)|Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz : "While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms which the pianist would later immerse himself in." Taylor's Quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival . He collaborated with saxophonist John Coltrane in 1958 ( Stereo Drive , currently available as Coltrane Time ).
1950s and '60s
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found Taylor's approach to performance (long pieces) unhelpful in conducting business.cite book | author=Spellman, A. B. | title=Four Lives in the Bebop Business | publisher=Limelight | year=1985 originally 1966 | isbn=0-87910-042-7 Landmark recordings, like Unit Structures (1966), appeared. With 'the Unit', musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay.
By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons , one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray (and later Andrew Cyrille ) formed the core personnel of The Unit, Taylor's primary group effort until Lyons's premature death in 1986. Lyons's playing, strongly influenced by jazz icon CharlieParker , retained a strong blues sensibility and helped keep Taylor's increasingly avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.cite web | url= http://allmusic.com/artist/jimmy-lyons-p7010/biography | title=Jimmy Lyons & ndash; Biography | publisher= Allmusic | accessdate=March 27, 2012 | author= Chris Kelsey|Kelsey, Chris
Solo concerts
Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the early 1970s. Many of these were released on album and include Indent (album)|Indent (1973), side one of ''Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973), http://frederatorblogs.com/kathleen/category/cecil-taylor/ Cecil Taylor @ Frederator Blogs Silent Tongues (1974), Garden (Cecil Taylor album)|Garden (1982), For Olim (1987), Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989) and The Tree of Life (album)|The Tree of Life (1998). He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and then a MacArthur Fellows Program|MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.
1990s and the Feel Trio
Following Lyons's death in 1986 Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with William Parker (musician)|William Parker (bass) and Tony Oxley (drums); the group can be heard on Celebrated Blazons , Looking (The Feel Trio) and the 10-CD set ''2 T's for a Lovely T''. He has also performed with larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label FMP (Free Music Production)|FMP , resulting in a massive boxed set of performances in duet and trio with a who's who of European free improvisors, including Oxley, Derek Bailey (guitarist)|Derek Bailey , Evan Parker , Han Bennink , Tristan Honsinger , Louis Moholo , Paul Lovens , and others. Most of his latter day recordings have been put out on European labels, with the exception of Momentum Space (a meeting with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones ) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998 Library of Congress performance Algonquin , a duet with violinist Mat Maneri . Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, a Bösendorfer piano that features nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary entitled http://www.chrisfelver.com/films/taylor.html "All the Notes", was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in an earlier documentary film Imagine the Sound (1981), in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.
2000s
Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continues to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) as well as with other musicians such as Joe Locke , Max Roach , and the poet Amiri Baraka . http://jazzinsidemagazine.com/Members/sweetpeasuzie/cecil-taylor-and-amiri-baraka-perform-in-barcelona/ Taylor Baraka Duo In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium 2005 was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz,cite journal |page=10 |title=Best Performances 2004 |first=Big |last=Band |year=2004 |publisher=All About Jazz Press and the same in 2009 for the Cecil Taylor Trio at the Highline Ballroom in 2009.cite journal |page=10 |title=Best Performances 2009 |first=Cecil Taylor |last=Trio |year=2009 |publisher=All About Jazz Press The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall. An autobiography, more concerts, and other projects are in the works.Taylor Website">cite web |title=Cecil Taylor Website |year=2011 |publisher=ceciltaylor-art In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited edition double LP record|LP titled Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs , a set of duos with long-time collaborator Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York City.
Ballet and dance
In addition to piano, Taylor has always been interested in ballet and dance. His mother, who died while he was still young, was a dancer and also played the piano and violin. Taylor once said: "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes". He collaborated with dancer Dianne McIntyre in 1977 and 1979. In 1979 he also composed and played the music for a twelve-minute ballet "Tetra Stomp: Eatin' Rain in Space", featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Heather Watts .
Poetry
Taylor is a poet , citing Robert Duncan (poet)|Robert Duncan , Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka as major influences. http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/funkhouser/ceciltaylor.html "being matter ignited...", Interview with Cecil Taylor by Chris Funkhouser published in Hambone , No. 12 (Nathaniel Mackey, editor). He often integrates his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The CD Chinampas , released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems, accompanying himself on percussion.
Influence and musical style
According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and Ornette Coleman in 1959."Pitch-Class Transformation in Free Jazz". Author(s): Steven Block. Source: Music TheorySpectrum , Vol. 12, No. 2, (Autumn, 1990), pp. 181-202. Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society for Music Theory. In 1964, Taylor co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild to enhance the working possibilities of avant-garde jazz musicians.
Taylor's style and methods have been described as ' Constructivism (art)|constructivist '.Review: untitled. Author(s): Robert Palmer. Reviewed work(s): Indent by Cecil Taylor. Source: The Black Perspective in Music , Vol. 2, No. 1, (Spring, 1974), pp. 94-95. Despite Scott Yanow 's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music": quote|Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyonehe goes on to praise Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance," and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision."
This vision is one of Taylor's greatest influences upon others: quote|Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of that I was really chord conscious.|Archie Shepp|quoted in Amiri Baraka|LeRoi Jones , album liner notes for Four for Trane , Impulse A-71, 1964. Cited in Black Music and Cultural Nationalism: The Maturation of Archie Shepp . Author(s): Daniel Walden. Source: Negro American Literature Forum , Vol. 5, No. 4, (Winter, 1971), pp. 150-154. Published by: St. Louis University.
Personal life
expand section|date=March 2012 In 1982, jazz critic Stanley Crouch outing|outed Taylor as being gay , prompting an angry response.cite book | title=Blowin' hot and cool: jazz and its critics | publisher= University of Chicago Press | author=Gennari, John | year=2006 | page=355 | isbn=0-226-28922-2 | url= http://books.google.com/books? id=dcxlWTZPK-AC However, Taylor never denied it.cite book | title=Queer noises: male and female homosexuality in twentieth-century music | publisher= Cassell (publisher)|Cassell | author=Gill, John | year=1995 | page=61 | isbn=0-304-34302-1 | url= http://books.google.com/books? id=ljbaAAAAMAAJ
http://robertlevin.wordpress.com/cecil-taylor-this-music-is-the-face-of-a-drum/ "Cecil Taylor: This Music is the Face of a Drum" by Robert Levin, 1971
http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/mtaylors.html Discography of Cecil Taylor, by Richard Shapiro
http://www.webmutations.com/ceciltaylor/ Cecil Taylor Online Sessionography
http://www.fmp-label.de/freemusicproduction/musiker/taylor.html The FMP releases
http://www.mattweston.com/cecilpanel.html The Shape of Jazz to Come - A panel discussion on April 6, 1964
http://openvault.wgbh.org/saybrother/MLA001037/index.html "Cecil Taylor interview" for the WGBH series, http://openvault.wgbh.org/series/Say+Brother/ Say Brother
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/funkhouser/ceciltaylor.html being matter ignited... - Interviewed by Chris Funkhouser on September 3, 1994
http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/ceciltaylor.html Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Jason Gross, January 2000
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php? id=1250 Mr. Taylor's Filibuster - Interviewed by Kurt Gottschalk, March 11, 2004
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/ctaylor2000.htm A Fireside Chat With Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Fred Jung
http://music.yahoo.com/ar-266592-bio--Cecil-Taylor Another Bio. (originally from Allmusic)
Persondata | NAME =Taylor, Cecil | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = United States|American Piano|pianist | DATE OF BIRTH =March 25, 1929 | PLACE OF BIRTH = | DATE OF DEATH = | PLACE OF DEATH = DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Cecil Category:African American pianists Category:African American poets Category:American jazz pianists Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Musicians from New York City Category:People from Queens Category:Free jazz pianists Category:Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development alumni Category:New England Conservatory alumni Category:Freedom Records artists Category:LGBT African Americans Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Enja Records artists Category:Blue Note Records artists Category:Candid Records artists Category:1929 births Category:Living people Category:Avant-garde jazz pianists Category:Cadence Jazz Records artists
