Legendary pianist and poet Cecil Taylor is one of the greatest improvisers in the history of modern jazz. Since the first performances of his quartet at the Five Spot Café in 1956, he has unflinchingly and tirelessly worked to define a sound that is still light years ahead of its time. His playing has been called fierce, constructivist, percussive, and atonal. We call it a thing of beauty, an expression of pure genius.
A Brooklynite for thirty years now, Cecil Taylor performs a spellbinding solo evening in his “back yard” at ISSUE Project Room’s unique new historic Downtown Brooklyn theater.
Cecil Taylor’s piano technique has been described as playing “eighty-eight tuned drums” – an intensely physical performance style. Taylor began playing piano at the age of six, and studied at New England Conservatory in the 1950s. In 1966, The Cecil Taylor Unit released the landmark album Unit Structures, an intense, atonal free jazz recording that cemented his place as the leader of a musical movement. After the death of Cecil Taylor Unit member and artistic collaborator Jimmy Lyons, Taylor formed a number of other ensembles, performing with Tony Oxley and William Parker in The Feel Trio, and in other combinations with Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Max Roach, Amiri Baraka, and others. Cecil Taylor’s style has been universally acknowledged as uncomprimising, “not for everyone,” and even in settings such as the White House Lawn (solo, for Jimmy Carter) he remains one of the most advanced, challenging artists of our time. Taylor has been the recipient of a McArthur Foundation “Genius” grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has been named an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
