Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929 – April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.

Taylor received classical training and was one of the early innovators of free jazz. His music is known for a high-energy, physical style, featuring complex, spontaneous playing that often includes tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His technique is often compared to that of a percussionist. Val Wilmer, a writer, used the phrase "eighty-eight tuned drums" to describe Taylor's style, referring to the 88 keys on a standard piano. He has also been called "Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings."

Early life and education

Cecil Percival Taylor was born on March 25, 1929, in Long Island City, Queens, and grew up in Corona, Queens. As an only child in a middle-class family, his mother, Almeda Ragland Taylor, encouraged him to play music from an early age. He started playing the piano at age six and later studied at the New York College of Music and the New England Conservatory in Boston. At the New England Conservatory, he studied popular music arrangement. During his time there, he also learned about modern European music. Composers Bela Bartók and Karlheinz Stockhausen had a big influence on his work.

In 1955, Taylor returned to New York City from Boston. He formed a group of four musicians, including soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, bassist Buell Neidlinger, and drummer Dennis Charles. Taylor’s first recording, Jazz Advance, included Lacy and was released in 1956. Richard Cook and Brian Morton, in the Penguin Guide to Jazz, described the recording as showing both traditional jazz styles and hints of the new ways Taylor would later explore. Taylor’s group with Lacy also performed at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, which was recorded as the album At Newport. In 1958, Taylor worked with saxophonist John Coltrane on the recording Stereo Drive, which is now available as Coltrane Time.

1950s and early 1960s

During the 1950s and 1960s, Cecil Taylor's music became more complex and different from traditional jazz styles. Finding performance opportunities was difficult, as club owners often found his long musical pieces slowed down business. His 1959 album Looking Ahead! showed his creativity compared to other jazz musicians. Unlike others at the time, Taylor used advanced techniques and changed styles quickly between musical phrases. These features remained important parts of his music for the rest of his life.

Important recordings, such as Unit Structures (1966), were released. The Cecil Taylor Unit, a group name used for Taylor’s changing group of musicians from 1962 to 2006, allowed musicians to develop new ways of interacting during performances. In the early 1960s, Albert Ayler, who was not credited for his work, performed with Taylor, including a session for the unreleased track "Four," later included in the 2004 Ayler box set Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70).

By 1961, Taylor regularly worked with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, who became one of his most important collaborators. Taylor, Lyons, and drummer Sunny Murray (later joined by Andrew Cyrille) formed the core of the Cecil Taylor Unit, Taylor’s main group until Lyons’ death in 1986. Lyons’ style, influenced by jazz musician Charlie Parker, included strong blues elements that helped connect Taylor’s experimental music to traditional jazz roots.

Late 1960s and 1970s

Taylor began giving solo concerts in the second half of the 1960s. His first known recorded solo performance was "Carmen With Rings," a 59-minute concert held at De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam on July 1, 1967. Two days earlier, Taylor performed the same piece at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Later concerts were released on albums, including Indent (1973), side one of Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973), Silent Tongues (1974), Garden (1982), For Olim (1987), Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989), and The Tree of Life (1998). He received praise from critics and audiences, performed for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, gave lectures as an artist-in-residence at universities, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973.

In 1976, Taylor directed a production of Adrienne Kennedy’s A Rat’s Mass at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. His production combined the original script with a chorus of voices that acted like musical instruments. Jimmy Lyons, Rashid Bakr, Andy Bey, Karen Borca, David S. Ware, and Raphe Malik performed in the production as the Cecil Taylor Unit, along with other musicians and actors.

1980s, 1990s, and the Feel Trio

After Lyons passed away in 1986, Taylor created the Feel Trio in the late 1980s. The group included William Parker on bass and Tony Oxley on drums. Their music can be found on recordings such as Celebrated Blazons, Looking (Berlin Version), The Feel Trio, and a 10-disc collection called 2 Ts for a Lovely T. Compared to Taylor’s earlier groups with Lyons, the Feel Trio used a more abstract style, less connected to traditional jazz and more influenced by European free improvisation. Taylor also performed with larger ensembles and big band projects.

In 1988, Taylor lived in Berlin for an extended period. His time there was recorded by the German label FMP, resulting in a box set of performances. These included duets and trios with many European free improvisors, such as Oxley, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Louis Moholo, and Paul Lovens. Most of Taylor’s later recordings were released on European labels, except for Momentum Space, a collaboration with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones, which was released on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released Algonquin, a 1998 performance at the Library of Congress, which featured Taylor in a duet with violinist Mat Maneri.

Taylor continued to perform concerts worldwide, often using his preferred instrument: a Bösendorfer piano with nine additional low keys. In 1987, he toured England with Australian pianist Roger Woodward. During these concerts, Woodward performed solo works by Xenakis, Takemitsu, and Feldman, followed by Taylor playing solo. A documentary about Taylor titled All the Notes was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor also appeared in a 1981 documentary called Imagine the Sound, where he discussed and performed his music, poetry, and dance. In 1993, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

2000s

Cecil Taylor recorded music not very often during the 2000s but kept performing with his own groups, such as the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band, as well as with other musicians like Joe Locke, Max Roach, and Amiri Baraka. In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium Jazz Club was nominated for Best Performance of 2004 by All About Jazz. In 2009, the Cecil Taylor Trio, which included Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall, was also nominated for the same award at the Highline Ballroom. In 2010, Triple Point Records released a special two-record set called Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of 2 Root Songs, featuring live recordings of duets between Taylor and his longtime collaborator Tony Oxley at the Village Vanguard.

In 2013, Taylor was honored with the Kyoto Prize for Music. He was described as "An Innovative Jazz Musician Who Has Fully Explored the Possibilities of Piano Improvisation." In 2014, a tribute concert called "Celebrating Cecil" was held in Philadelphia to honor Taylor's career and 85th birthday. In 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted a retrospective exhibition titled "Open Plan: Cecil Taylor."

In 2008, Taylor performed with Pauline Oliveros at the Curtis R Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The concert was recorded and released on a DVD that also includes a 75-minute video of Taylor reading his poetry, titled Floating Gardens: The Poetry Of Cecil Taylor. In 2016, a documentary film titled The Silent Eye, directed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson, was released, focusing on Taylor and dancer Min Tanaka.

Ballet and dance

Taylor was also interested in ballet and dance. His mother, who passed away when he was young, was a dancer and played the piano and violin. Taylor once said, "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes." He worked with dancer Dianne McIntyre from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. In 1979, he composed and played the music for a 12-minute ballet called "Tetra Stomp: Eatin' Rain in Space," which included Mikhail Baryshnikov and Heather Watts.

Poetry

Taylor was a poet who named Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and Amiri Baraka as important influences. He often included his poems in his musical performances, and these poems are frequently found in the notes inside the covers of his albums. The album Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, features Taylor reciting several of his poems while playing percussion instruments. His poetry was compared to his music because of how Taylor changes and reworks both words and musical elements in his work.

Musical style and legacy

According to Steven Block, free jazz began with Cecil Taylor's performances at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and with Ornette Coleman in 1959. In 1964, Taylor helped start the Jazz Composers Guild to create more chances for experimental jazz musicians.

Taylor's style and methods are often called "constructivist." Scott Yanow of AllMusic noted that Taylor's music is difficult for some people to enjoy, but he also praised Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance" and his "advanced," "radical," "original," and unwavering "musical vision."

This musical vision is a key part of Taylor's legacy:

— Archie Shepp, quoted in LeRoi Jones, album liner notes for Four for Trane (Impulse A-71, 1964)

Scott Yanow wrote: "Taylor's high-energy, unusual sounds matched the free jazz of the time, but he was actually guiding the direction of the music rather than following a trend. […] In fact, it could be said that no other jazz music from that era reached the same level of power and intensity as Cecil Taylor's."

Personal life and death

Taylor moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, in 1983. He died at his home in Brooklyn on April 5, 2018, at the age of 89. At the time of his death, Taylor was working on an autobiography, planning future concerts, and other projects.