Cecil (Percival) Taylor - Selected discography

Avant-garde pianist and composer, born in New York City, USA. He studied at the New York College of Music and the New England Conservatory, Boston. In 1956 he made his first important quartet recordings, which diverged sharply from established approaches to jazz language and harmony.

Taylor is known for being an extremely energetic, physical yet subtle player, producing exceedingly complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms.

Taylor played and recorded predominantly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons from 1961 until Lyons' death in 1986, along with drummers Sunny Murray and later Andrew Cyrille. From the early 1970s onwards, Taylor 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 Genius Award in 1991.

Following Lyons' death, Taylor has played in a variety of settings ranging from solo (e.g. Silent Tongues, Indent, For Olim, Garden, Erzulie Maketh Scent, The Tree of Life, and In Willisau), the "Feel Trio" formed in the early 1990s with William Parker (bass) and Tony Oxley (drums) (Celebrated Blazons, Looking (The Feel Trio), and the 10-CD set 2 T's for a Lovely T) as well as larger ensembles and big-band projects. Few recordings from 2000 have yet been published, though Taylor, now in his 70's, continues to captivate audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, the Bösendorfer piano that features 9 extra lower register keys.

In addition to piano, Taylor has always been interested in ballet and dance. Taylor once said: "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes".

Taylor is also an accomplished poet, citing Robert Duncan, Charles Olson and Amiri Baraka as a major influence. The CD Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems unaccompanied.

Selected discography

Jazz Advance, 1956 The Cecil Taylor Quartet at Newport, 1957 Looking Ahead!, 1958 Coltrane Time (identical with Hard Driving Jazz), 1958 Love for Sale, 1959 The World of Cecil Taylor, 1960 Air, 1961 Jumpin' Punkins, 1961 New York City R&B (with Buell Neidlinger), 1961 Cell Walk for Celeste, 1961 Mixed, 1961 Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come, 1962 Unit Structures, 1966 Conquistador!, 1966 Great Paris Concert, vol 1 & Carla Bley's "JCOA: Jazz Composer's OrchestrA" (featuring Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Larry Coryell and Gato Barbieri.) The Great Concert (identical with Nuits de la Fondation Maeght), 1969 Indent, 1973 Akisakila, 1973 Solo, 1973 Spring of Two Blue J's, 1973 Silent Tongues, 1974 Dark to Themselves, 1976 Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within), 1976 Nachricht vom Lande, 1976 Cecil Taylor & Mary Lou Williams: Embraced, 1977 Cecil Taylor Unit, 1978 3 Phasis, 1978 Live in the Black Forest, 1978 One Two Many Salty Swift and Not Goodbye, 1978 Tony Williams: Joy of Flying, 1978 Cecil Taylor and Max Roach: Historic Concerts, 1979 Fly! Fly!, 1980 Is it the Brewing Luminous, 1980 Calling it the 8th, 1981 Garden, 1981 Winged Serpent, 1984 Cecil Taylor Segments II/ Orchestra of two Continents, 1984 For Olim, 1986 Olu Iwa, 1986 Iwnontonwusi - Live at Sweet Basil, 1986 Live in Bologna, 1987 Live in Vienna, 1987 Chinampas, 1987 Tzotzil Mummers Tzotzil, 1987 Erzulie Maketh Scent, 1988 Pleistozaen mit Wasser, 1988 Riobec - Cecil Taylor & Günter Sommer, 1988 Leaf Palm Hand, 1988 Spots, Circles, and Fantasy, 1988 Regalia - Cecil Taylor & Paul Lovens, 1988 Remembrance, 1988 The Hearth, 1988 Riobec, 1988 Legba Crossing, 1988 Alms / Tiergarten (Spree), 1988 In East Berlin, 1988 In Florescence, 1989 Looking (Berlin Version) solo, 1989 Looking (Berlin Version) Corona, 1989 Looking (The Feel Trio), 1989 Celebrated Blazons, 1990 Doubly Holy House, 1990 Melancholy, 1990 Nailed, 1990 The Tree of Life, 1991 Always a Pleasure, 1993 The Light of Corona, 1996 Almeda, 1996 Qu'a: Live at the Iridium, vol. 2, 1998 Algonquin, 1998 Incarnation, 1999 The Willisau Concert, 2000

Interviews and discussions

The Shape of Jazz to Come - A panel discussion on April 6, 1964 being matter ignited... - Interviewed by Chris Funkhouser on September 3, 1994 Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Hason Gross, January 2000 Innovation, improvisation - Interviewed by Miya Masaoka for the SF Bay Guardian, October 25, 2000 Mr. Taylor's Filibuster - Interviewed by Kurt Gottschalk, March 11, 2004 A Fireside Chat With Cecil Taylor - Interviewed by Fred Jung

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