Just hearing these early recordings, one takes pleasure from Taylor's sheer audacity. He does what all musicians at some point dream of doing: going on stage and banging on the piano with hands and fists, like a film technician simply searching for the neat sound effect. But as Taylor's recordings from the 1960s show, his music is much more profound than that.
The level of telepathic musical interaction in Taylor's groups starting around 1963 with the addition of drummer Steve Murray and 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 dominates the music. He is, as Steve Lacy says, "the engine, the energy source" for these volcanic recordings.
Not only Taylor's piano technique, but his stamina itself is astonishing by the 1960s. The mental stamina needed to keep a group together in a period when he couldn't possibly make a living playing his music is matched by the physical stamina of a true athlete: Taylor's all-out assaults on the piano have both arms moving at a rate of hundreds and hundreds of machinegun rounds per minute; and he solos for up to thirty minutes on a stretch. The volume and intensity level of these performances is not merely the result of turning an amplifier up to eleven. It is the result of a fervent commitment to the music, and a truly grand passion for self-expression.
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.
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.
Taylor's innovations rest upon the foundations of awe-inspiring piano technique, as arpeggios spiral off effortlessly in opposite directions, while in other passages, glowing chords are teased from the piano with the light touch of a Bill Evans or a John Lewis. This technique creates an ongoing well-spring of creativity which cannot possibly dry up.
Taylor's unusual longevity in the jazz world (he is still performing today--and how!) has led to two and a half decades of high-level work since the ground-breaking years in the 1960s.
The WHRB Orgy will conclude with some of the highlights of recent years, including such gems as a duet with legendary drummer Max Roach and a performance from 1987 in Bologna, Italy, which ranks as one of the most passionate, even romantic recordings of Taylor's career.
In the midst of the primordial chaos of much of his playing, Taylor quiets his Units with a nod of the head and spontaneously composes slow, lyrical movements which, taken off of the record and written down, would stand up to Chopin, Rachmaninoff, or Stravinksy.
Often, after over an hour of his "energy-music," Taylor will end a concert with one of his shimmering slow movements and the audience will sit stunned as he calmly walks off stage.
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.