Cecil Taylor, Pianist Who Defied Jazz Orthodoxy, Is Dead at 89 (07taylor) (07taylor)

So I said "Alexa, play Cecil Taylor". I said "Alexa, next" a lot. If I was a hipster smoking Gauloises in the village in the 60's, I would have nodded along with everyone else. Today, not so much.

I’m acquainted with Cecil Taylor’s work, but not thoroughly. But I am blown way -and deeply moved- by the comments submitted here by discerning keepers of the flame. Art appreciation at its finest.

"Some of his greatest musical relationships were with drummers, among them Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Sunny Murray and Ronald Shannon Jackson." Unfortunately an important name was omitted from this list of drummers: Andrew Cyrille. Andrew played with Cecil from 1964 through the mid-seventies, and along with Jimmy Lyons was a key figure in Cecil Taylor's Unit. Andrew, at 78, is still making music and released two strong and innovative records in 2016.

Thank you Mr. Ratliff, for this superb review.

I had the opportunity to hear Mr. Taylor play several times, and enjoyed the range of emotions you get with an uncompromising artist...being transported into new melodies, the flow of words and notes in his poems and compositions fully engaging me. BUT...there was one night around 1995, I met David Murray and drove back to NYC with him. We invited me to join him at a party at a downtown artist's loft, set up with a backline, musicians sitting in after sets, a who's who of the NYC jazz scene that night. Murray gets all excited and says he has someone I have to meet; seconds later I am shaking hands with Cecil Taylor. David says, "Cecil, I have one question man. One question. Did you listen to the tracks I sent you? I don't need to know anything else, did you listen?" Taylor looked at him and smiled, "yeah man, I listened." David was ecstatic. "You listened? Oh man. Thanks!", while shaking his hand energetically. He then ran off to tell others that Cecil Taylor had listened to his tracks. I stood there and started talking with Taylor; we talked about his current life and work. He was living in Paris at the time and talked about the feeling of respect he felt in living there; that he was not some unknown useless person; that the French valued musicians and artists; even describing his pleasure at being recognized as he walked the streets. He was open and engaging. For me it was 15 minutes never to be forgotten. RIP Mr. Taylor.

About 40 years ago my ex-wife’s string quartet was getting ready to rehearse a performance of Cecil Taylor’s music with Cecil on piano when it became clear that the hall wouldn’t be available for a couple of hours. They needed someone to take Cecil to lunch; it turned out to be me. If I’m any kind of musician particularly I’m a jazz musician. Lunch with Cecil Taylor! Terrifying. Cecil had a reputation for prickliness and not tolerating nonsense and I’m supposed to divert his attention away from a two hour delay in the rehearsal? We ate at some modest sandwich place on Castro street. The setting wasn’t conducive to conversation. But we talked and talked. Probably more about my music than his, which in retrospect is a little embarrassing, as if you’ve caught yourself telling jokes to Jerry Seinfeld. We got to the rehearsal just in time.

Wow! That is what I thought every time I heard him. The last time I saw him live, back in the early 2000s, I was still shaking my head in awe the next morning over his sheer power, technique and iconoclastic approach that still somehow told the story of where he came from musically. He was fearless and devoted. What else is there?

This guy was very very special. His music was the development of a new form. I wish I could have seen him perform.

I'm moved by all the remembrances of those who first heard Cecil live in the '70s. I did too - in San Francisco, at the Keystone Korner, two nights straight, on a double bill with his '60s bandmate Archie Shepp. It was an ecstatic weekend for a kid from the Midwest passing through town. I got to hear him all over - in Minneapolis, Albuquerque, Manhattan, Brooklyn. I named my Manx cat after him (so, Cecil Taylless). Was at the last of his famed duo performances with Max Roach in 2000 in front of Butler Library at Columbia. Anyone of whatever accomplishment as a player, and in whatever genre, who once lost themselves in a room or under a sky where he was performing, was bound to rediscover the elemental power of sounds. So the sadness at losing him is just a little offset by a feeling of deep gratitude.

I went to hear Cecil Taylor at a small venue in Philadelphia back in 1986. I had recently gone there to see Horace Silver, my favorite jazz pianist, and one of Taylor’s influences. Right after Horace Silver, I went to a performance of another innovative artist, Sun Ra. What a performance his band put on! So I figured I had to go hear Cecil Taylor, whom I had never seen or heard. I was amazed at how his fingers moved over the keys. No one to this day have I seen who could play so fast! It was such a memorable performance that I immediately went out and bought one of his albums on which he performs solo. It is gratifying to hear that he lived and performed many years longer than most great jazz artists.

That's a beautiful obituary. I knew Taylor and Steve Lacy in Paris in the Sixties. It was a time when music of all sorts was transforming itself. Both of them struggled, insisted, persisted and found the audiences they could not get in America. Part of what was wonderful about them was not only their music, but their persons. They were simply beautiful people, passionate about life as well as their art. One of the memorable days of my life was Taylor at my house in Paris talking about his fight for understanding. Black and the avant garde were not much of a thing in New York. Like many artists of that time in many fields, the transformational nature of their work found a base in Europe that slowly, painfully led them to acceptance in America.

Wonderful obituary of a remarkable musician. We remember Mr Taylor as our somewhat reclusive neighbor in the 1980s on Fort Greene Place in (pre-)Brooklyn. May he Rest In Peace and Play On!

Thanks for the excellent summation of Cecil Taylor's life and work. He would be one of my heroes if only for his persistence in doing thing his way. Beyond that, his music enraptured me with its energy, imagination and its often overlooked links to the jazz tradition. I recall an extraordinary concert in collaboration with AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) affiliated artists at Mandel Hall in Chicago in the late '80s. It was not necessarily a musically successful collaboration, but it was a supreme example of spontaneously creative interaction at the highest level. It was also memorable because my date literally fled the venue during a particularly intense passage. Powerful indeed. Thank you, Cecil. RIP.

The re-inventors of the piano: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Bartok, Taylor. They're already crowding around a gigantic heavenly Bosendorfer learning from each other. Three "tips of the iceberg" for me: "Jazz Advance" was a life-changing record when I first heard it in college (in the 1970s) at a time when I was already familiar with the then-avant-garde concert music of Boulez, Stockhausen, et al. Cecil Taylor breathed a new, different, and altogether wonderful life into their musical language. Two decades after recording "Jazz Advance", in "Three Phasis" he gave us a "hit single" that showcased how rich his own language had grown. And two decades after that, a sort of "late style" in a luminous performance at the Library of Congress with microtonal violinist Mat Maneri preserved on "Algonquin". At 1979 I experienced him with his then-sextet at Fat Tuesday's, arriving early enough to be able to sit at the table closest to the piano for two sets, literally at the high end of the keyboard. The air around him was electric and his sweat flew over the keyboard. In a lifetime of concertgoing I was never so privileged as I was that night.

The cook that cooked the transforming aural gumbo of my psychedelic adolescence.

It seems only a handful of musicians as singularly original and unique as Cecil Taylor surface in ones lifetime. Mr. Taylor should be an American icon, hero, and national treasure of the arts. Sadly, he will be remembered , if at all, as an outsider, and quirky eccentric. Anyone as devoted to his art and creative vision as Cecil Taylor deserves a very special place in our world. I'm sad he is gone.

Did Luc Ferrari and Taylor work together??

well you did great things here...thanks for all the colors you introduced us to, my eyes and ears and heart have never known such beauty before and after...you can spend your time with all you musical partners who've been waiting toplay on and again.....i'm gonna go home and listen to you and max and you and elvin and dewey.... appreciate your contribution to betterment of all...play on sweet prince!!!!

Great pianist and thinker, reinvented piano playing after a long Liszt tradition. As jazz pianist I learned that entire (?) technique from him and have published 25 LPs and CDs of free jazz. Check it out. My last letter to CT (together with my recent pfMentum CD MA) arrived some weeks before his death. I told CT that I am extremely grateful or his inspiration. Perhaps somebody has a look at my work? Prof. Guerino Mazzola, School of Music, U of Minnesota

More than 15 years ago I came across a copy of "The Great Concert of Cecil Taylor," a three LP Prestige box set of a 1969 French concert with Mr. Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, Sam Rivers and Andrew Cyrille (liner notes by Gary Giddins). In all the years since I have listened to it only once straight through, when the stars had aligned and it was the right time. I recently started reducing my music collection based on how often I have listened to any particular album in the past two decades. My one listen to this one matters not, it is one of those treasures that I will never get rid of regardless of how many times I may or may not play it, because when I am ready next, and I look forward to the day, he will be there to transport me like virtually no one else has and can.

Excellent article, but the superb Andrew Cyrille must be added to the list of drummers Taylor had his greatest musical relationships with. Cyrille's eleven year tenure with the maestro started in the late 60's, and spanned a crucial period in the growth and development of Taylor's new American language.

I have always loved mainstream jazz pianists such as Oscar Peterson, Tommy Flanagan, Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Barron, etc. But I saw Cecil Taylor in concert with another avant-garde genius (Ornette Coleman) in the 1960's at a dive in Brooklyn and I was transfixed. The band was on fire and they played nearly 3 straight hours. I was expecting discord and blaring and instead heard free jazz at the top of its game - swinging, pulsating, enthralling. RIP Mr. Taylor.

One of the great artists of all has left us. What a tireless burning Spirit he was and will always be. Deeply brilliant, his accomplishments are stunning in their magnitude, originality, power and deep beauty. His commanding melodic/harmonic character (great dramatic lines, heart breaking melodies, angular propulsive phraseology), his feel for blues, and total passionate intensity is unforgettable. For all of us, it can be said there is much in his music and poetry (and his musings in the many published interviews he gave) to inspire us to better fulfill our creative and human potential within our own lifetimes. One thing Cecil taught me is that it is more important to be playing from the basis of one's feelings than impressing audiences by being clever. There's much more to say, and those touched by his artistry will have their feelings to share and add to his life's work and legacy. His music changed my life for the better. Complementary to his artistry, and critical to his stature in the pantheon of the greats , was the tremendous will he possessed to be the greatest he could be and accomplishing this while being marginalized by critics, public and many musicians throughout the decades! The necessity to survive and the strength to witness the full flowering of his innovative rich musical language without compromise is yet another accolade for him that few others have attained.

I sometimes lament not having been born a generation earlier. In those moments, I would give anything to have seen Navarro, Parker, and Powell at Birdland. Then I recall the dozens of times that I saw Cecil Percival Taylor (almost always with Jimmy Lyons), at Sweet Basil, Fat Tuesday's, and the other places that he played in (the Columbia university sets with Max Roach!), in the seventies and eighties. In those moments, I realize that I saw and heard the only true heir to the legends of bebop. No one in that era of jazz played, in every moment, as if his life was at stake. To find another creator in that era who so spent his or her soul in the making of art, one had to look to another medium. To find such greatness today, one has to look to other fields - technology or the pure sciences, maybe, or some other endeavor that inspires the individual to explore, experiment, and expound with every fiber of his or her being. Peter Pullman Wail: The Life of Bud Powell

Cecil Taylor's music may not have swung in any traditional sense, but I found it thrilling. I saw him live at an outdoor festival in Pittsburgh, where he alienated some minds and opened others.

Back in my college jazz appreciation course, one of the best I ever took, my teacher played Cecil Taylor's music and tried to explain its workings. If I remember the story correctly, he told of how Taylor had been physically ejected from a New Orleans jazz club by an owner who did not understand or appreciate his music. Some of it sounds like someone just banging on a piano, my teacher said, and anyone can do that, but he could play classical music and virtually anything else as well, which most people cannot. He wasn't trying to say that Taylor's music was more advanced or evolved than Beethoven's, only that it was just as complex and sophisticated. His music was definitely an acquired taste, but anyone who took the time to listen to it could probably find something to relate to.

Superb overview of Mr Taylor’s life and art. Ratliff proves himself a first rate music critic. I have strong recollections of a performance involving Taylor and Lyons. It was at Five Saints in the East Village, probably early Seventies. The room was arranged in long picnic style tables, each approximately four times the length of a conventional picnic table. As I walked in, I noticed that many listeners were asleep, their heads on the tables. Once I began listening to his music, I could understand why. He played in long, seemingly endless torrents of sound. His sax player, Lyons, looked fatigued. I realized that the best thing to do was let the music wash over me - not try to figure out what he was doing. It was an amazing display of music and stamina. I managed to stay awake.

I discovered Mr. Taylor's remarkable music soon after I began listening to jazz, in the early 1970s, and followed his work ever since. I had the privilege of hearing him perform in concert three times, and watching him perform — the sheer physicality of his playing — was something never to be forgotten. What he leaves us with, in addition to a remarkable body of work, is a lesson in how perseverance in the face of enormous animosity can be rewarded in the end; that a visionary musician who once had to wash dishes for a living can be remembered at the end by NPR, where I first heard of his passing, and The New York Times. He fought for his art and won.

Will there ever be another Cecil as cool as Mr Taylor?

I saw Cecil at the Ronnie Scott club in London in the 70's, I was 19 . I was with my Jazz loving stepfather and our family friend Llyodd. They couldn't take Cecil' s playing so they stayed in the lobby. I walked in there were maybe 5 people in the club, for a room designed for a 100. I sat and watched Jimmy Lyons, Andrew Cyrille and Cecil just blast, brilliant, wild sounds, I was hooked. 25 years later I ran into Cecil walking on 6th ave near the Library in the Village, I engaged him in a brief chat, he was gracious and charming. Artist all the way thru. He will be missed.

Cecil Taylor was, indeed, a force of nature. The first time I saw him, he played solo on a bill with Andrew Hill and Sir Roland Hanna at the Village Gate in 1974. He sat down at the piano and played uninterrupted for close to an hour. Totally blew me away! Last time I saw Cecil was at the Whitney retrospective of his work a couple of years ago. He looked weak and fragile, but, when he sat at the piano and placed his hands on the keys, the magic was back. I imagine it never really left.

I have one of his lps. It is not easy listening but I must say very creative. He plays like no one other that Cecil Taylor. RIP.

Thank you, Cecil. Your extraordinary artistry will live on.

Now, there’s a man who lived a life the way that life should be.

Is that Andrew Cyrille on the far right? I am almost certain it is.

I saw Mr. Taylor and Jimmy Lyons at a rare concert during the '70s in the east Village. I expected it to be difficult, based on his albums that I owned. Instead, it was both challenging and fascinating. I and my friends stayed for the whole session; nobody walked out. I saw Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn play a remarkable joint concert in update NY in 2016. It hadn't occurred to me at the time, but I agree that Cecil Taylor was clearly an influence; thanks for pointing that out. A fine legacy. http://empac.rpi.edu/events/2016/fall/vijay-iyer-and-craig-taborn

I first encountered Cecil Taylor when I was a student at Antioch College in the early 1970's. He organized large student orchestras with himself as bandleader, conducting and performing. I was in the audience for two concerts, both of which went on for hours. They were like ultramarathons. Audience members wandered in and out, but I can proudly say that I stuck it out to the end. I had never seen anything like it. I have always thought of these concerts as models of dedication to the creative process.

Isn't this terrible news. If any one musician has been my muse it has been Cecil. Had I known he was living alone I certainly would have tried to visit. What a loss. and no mention in the obit about his beloved Bosendorfer! My life is the story of an unfulfilled desire for those six extra keys! All I can add in his memory is to recall the day they hauled that piano into a downtown street and he performed there all fresco to the delight of many.

Please let this be on the front page tomorrow. Thank you.

A fine tribute to a great, if misunderstood artist. I saw him perform twice in Boston during the 70s. However the link to Jimmy Lyons sends you to a story about another person, Jimmy LYON. RIP, Mr. Taylor.

His music was thrilling and groundbreaking. I'll never forget (or forgive) the disrespectful treatment he received in that awful and reactionary Wynton Marsalis-curated Ken Burns series on jazz, in which his work was derided by "young lions" who have never had a truly original or innovative musical idea in their lives. Certainly no one could ever say about Cecil Taylor that his music was not original or innovative.

I'll admit that I didn't always "get" it, but I still loved that Cecil Taylor was out there challenging us all to see and hear his voice.