In the Dark

This morning I was listening to a classic jazz album recorded in 1960 (in New York City) and called The World of Cecil Taylor. I’ve had for a very long time, but haven’t listened to it for ages. I don’t know why that is, because it’s brilliant. I haven’t posted much about Cecil Taylor on here so I thought I’d do a quick post about it with a sample in the form of my favourite track, Port of Call.

The 1960s saw a number of crucial innovations in the development of jazz, e.g. removing the bar stucture, making improvisations no longer dependent upon recurrent chordal patterns, and getting rid of fixed tempos. Looking back of the evolutionary history of this music, it’s clear that this album should be placed right at the spot where the old coalesced with the new. Throughout, Cecil Taylor’s solos are built by mixing paraphrases of thematic elements with very free improvisation but on Port of Call you can see more obviously signs of the transition between past and future. On the whole, this track conforms more closely to past keyboard transitions than the others: Taylor’s solo divides cleanly into 8-bar segments, with his left hand accentuating the harmonic shifts while his right supplies the melody. But there are also dazzling parallel runs which still sound strikingly modern and which few pianists could pull off so effortlessly at such a fast tempo. His total command of the instrument allows his imagination to find expression through it. Idea after idea comes flooding out as his solo progresses, quicksilver clusters of notes falling like heavy rain on crystal. Awesome.

P.S. The other members of the trio are Buell Neidlinger on bass and Dennis Charles on drums.