On a rainy night I finally encountered some of
my heroes from my youth, drummer Andrew Cyrille and bassist William Parker,
accompained by trumpet player Enrico Rava in an interesting concert in a full
occupied theatre in my city of birth. Not their first effort together, since
the three released a record in 2022 titled Too Blues for Cecil (Tum Records),
an hommage to pianist Cecil Taylor with whom under different circumstances the
three played together and played together in different occasions.
Andrew Cyrille, in effect, was one of the first
drummers to appear near the NY born pianist in two beautiful records by Blue
Note label who sanctioned the maturity for Taylor: Unit Structures and
Conquistador (both released in 1966). William Parker was part of the Cecil
Taylor Feel Trio along with drummer Tony Oxley – I had the opportunity to
listen to that trio: everyone was playing his own thing almost separately from
the other twos, but it all worked so fine together.
As far as Rava, finally, in 2022 was
distributed through
bandcamp a recording from 1984 originally recorded in Warsaw by an ensemble
comprising the Italian trumpet player and Taylor – and William Parker –
commanding one of his large ensembles he was famous for. But this is not the
only occasion the two played together: it’s only a good advice for you in order
to find out incredibly interesting music from the past.
A magnificent concert the one I attended
yesterday night, with a couple of Monk themes – Round About Midnight and
Straight No Chaser – put one in the middle, the other almost at the end of the
exhibition, echoing not only the pianist from Rocky Mount but also the phantom
of Miles Davis who recorded those themes, and the rest as pure improvisation.
Rava in a Miles mode with short sentences to which drummer and bassist
responded with their instrument.
Not a telepathic interplay as the one offered
by Mingus – the only bassist I can compare Parker, not by the techniques they
use but as far as feeling even if their personalities are far from each other –
bands, particularly drummer Dannie Richmond, but an intriguing way to underline
every phrase from one musician to another. At a certain point Rava made a
gesture with his hand indicating a circle to Cyrille, if this recalls something
in your mind.
Cyrille is able to create complex
polyrhithms, but in this occasion he also gave a lession in swinging to younger
drummers. Parker didn’t use that much his famous bow on his bass, only in few
point to underline the music in some passages. One might wonder where the
spiritual charisma from groups as In Order To Survive is finished – but the theme
from Criminals at the White House was beckoned yesterday night at a certain
point – but I believe it has been transformed into a new kindness.
Dense up to a certain point, but gentle as
Cyrille’s brushes on the skin of the drums, varied as you can exspect from
seasoned musicians, full of nuances and not only of thick textures, the music
did not pay hommage to the letter to the music of Cecil Taylor but was
nonetheless a sum of the experiences of the three musicians involved, and so an
indirect hommage to the late great pianist.
If I have to find a defect to what I heard,
this resides not in the music but in times. William Parker would subscribe the
phrase by Coltrane “I want to be a force for the good”, but with wars all
around the world these three musicians who were ‘only’ playing music were
seeming to me so small in comparison to what they have around in terms of
conflicts and climate change, as an example. But I believe if I had in mind
more than the music itself, this has to be credited to them, since music
yesterday night was still, as it has to be, more than just a sum of sounds.
It is almost a commonplace the fact that
“fusion”, born in the middle of the 1960s, burned itself after a fist and
beginning incredible, creative season leaving the most adventurous listeners
dry and thirsty becoming a catchy and more pop-rock oriented (i.e.: simplified)
style of music.
In fact, after the fist creative outputs
by the like of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock as On The Corner and Sextant,
after incredibly skilled musicians such as Jaco Pastorius, after creating a
music that mixed the principles of improvisation with instruments coming from
all over the world like Trilok Gurtu’s tablas and tampouras, “fusion” became a
label for sometimes easy to create and to play music, sometimes cerebral and
unproductive experimentations.
The same thing happened with post-rock at the
end of 1990s, with band such as Tortoise giving originally life to a music that
was funk but also hardcore punk – at least in spirit – but that degraded in few
years into a mere juxtaposition of different elements in order to find out the
most rare approach to various notes, instruments and styles of music.
A complete different path, reminiscent of the
famous Loft
Era we talked about in the past, is that of a leader of those faraway days,
violinist Jason Kao Hwang. While for more info on him we recommend another
review of one of his last year works, one of the most important issued in
these times, this new album titled Book Of Stories (True Sound Recordings,
2023) is played by the Critical Response Trio.
The trio features Hwang at electric violin, Anders Nilsson at electric guitar and Michael
T.A. Thompson at drums. The music is flavored with funk and reggae hints
and spices here and there, but the compositions, all by Hwang, are anyway adventurous
enough to be interesting for all fans of improvised music, even non idiomatic,
because the most recognizable parts are in a way ‘abstracted’ and conducted
into climaxes or moments of rest that are fully dynamics and that can bring the
listener a lot of fun, being a mix of the ‘mental’ approach of spontaneous
improvised music and the more enjoyable characteristics of popular music
without being ‘populistic’.
This way, compared with the previous Hwang
release in duo with J.A. Deane, the album offers the listener another face of
the instrumentalist and composer way of understanding and exercise creativity,
likewise interesting and daring. Powered by the experience of the musicians
involved (Anders Nilssen played guitar with William Parker, Paquito D’Rivera,
Elliott Sharp and Ken Filiano among the many others, while Michael T.A.
Thompson was a solid drummer for musicians such as Charles Gayle, Joe McPhee,
Matthew Shipp, Henry Grimes and John Patitucci), the record is solid enough to
make you want to listen to it more than once.
The album opens with The Power of Many in the
Soul of One. Violin phrases, and subsequent silences, are interspersed with
rhythmic outbursts while the guitar arpeggios embellish Hwang phrases. A sense
of urgency and, together with it, a meditative quality, are mixing together in
what seem to be an attempt to create a dramatic peak that abruptly diminishes
into a more introspective, even if electrical, interaction.
A pedal change atmosphere leaving then space to
a beautiful drum solo, after which electric guitar explodes in different
rhythmic approaces on an atonal basis. After the guitar express itself in full,
it’s time for the effected violin to recall all the musicians involved into a
more meditative mood, played almost until the end of the track. Many nuances
and the overall approach makes you think about the Loft Era music, but played
through a more contemporary vision.
Music continues with Upside Circle Down, and
more than of the Lofts it it reminiscent of the first AACM experiments – I’m
thinking in particular to the first releases in the 1970s by Anthony Braxton
with Dave Holland on cello or Kenny Wheeler on fluegelhorn. Brief assertions
are interspersed with silence, inviting people to listen to the music and
themselves more carefully, but the drums’ almost funky groove creates a first
difference, almost a new idea of “fusion”, and a recontextualization of
experimental music from the end of the 1960s.
Guitar arpeggios create a magical atmosphere,
as you can listen through works such different but with a similar emotional
approach as In A Silent Way by Miles Davis and Andrew Cyrille’s Lebroba –
notably with two pairly sensitive guitarists as Nilssen like John McLaughlin
and Bill Frisell. A Silent Ghost Follows is a slightly shorter composition
introduced by the colors of mallets and a contemporary claim by the violin,
making us remember Anthony Braxton again or the AEoC.
This time the use of different pitches – the
violin looks for very high notes, the guitar opens up to middle tones –
captures the listener, again carried in a past era still harbinger of stimuli
for the future – the violin creates almost modern electronic textures into the
solid structure we depicted. Dragon Carved into Bone takes the same matter on
another temperature, with violin soloing on higher pitches and drums depicting
a more bustling sonorous landscape, while the guitar gently deconstructs a
melody into parts and pieces so to rebuild them together in another,
interesting shape.
More quiet parts are alternating with denser
structures, while drums nod to some reggae/dub or blues rhythms. Last piece,
Friends Forever, is an hommage to the musicians that in the past gave shape to
the music here present, through ages and through all the difficulties that
didn’t prevented anyway many of them from creating beauty. The piece is the
most melodical of the lotto, even if doesn’t lack the blues scrape but also the
sweetness typical of the genre.
Living on the other side of the ocean, I’m not
completely aware of what Hwang and friends future steps will be. For the
moment, enjoying this music is an unexpected gift that deserves to be shared
with fans of improvisation. The album has been released on June 30 this year
and is available also through the artist Bandcamp
page.
“The eye looks, mind deciphers, hands attack,
ear informs”. This
is one of the methodological indications the New York City-born pianist Cecil
Taylor gave the listeners through the liner notes to his 1966 milestone “Unit Structures”. Since his first 1956
recordings with his own band, and next year appearance at the Newport Jazz
Festival, the pianist stands up in his own right as one of the pivotal figures
of last century contemporary music.
“I immediately felt that I would be able to
figure out my own universe from his propositions: they were really brilliant;
his way to develop monumental improvisations from little melodic cells was
gifted with so much structural strength […] I sincerely think that Cecil Taylor
is one of the great geniuses of our times as the creator of a real synthesis,
as Anthony Braxton, between jazz and Western tradition” [Marilyn Crispell interviewed by
Stéphane Ollivier, Jazz Magazine, Dec. 2009]
Born in
1929 and active in R&B and swing bands before giving life to his first
quartet featuring soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, bassist Buell Neidlinger and
drummer Denis Charles, whose concerts at the Five Spot Café in 1957 have been
taken as Ornette Coleman’s two years later as the beginning of the ‘free jazz’
movement, in 1964 Cecil Taylor also created with his alter ego trumpeter Bill
Dixon the Jazz Composers Guild.
Andrew Cyrille
“Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking
about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of
that I was really chord conscious.” [Archie Shepp, from the liner notes of 1964
Impulse! Record “Four for Trane”]. If
one listens to the ‘Involution/Evolution’
movement of Alms/Tiegarten (Spree)
recorded with a large ensemble in Berlin,
more than a relationship with Iannis Xenakis music can be found. Not by chance,
since Taylor’s
way to relate music to architecture is something he has in common with the
Greek born composer.
In 1961
Impulse! Records issued Gil Evans’ Into
the Hot, a record split between the two pianists bands and visions. For the
first time, Taylor
left off traditional notation and started to develop his own modus operandi.
With a band featuring Archie Shepp and Jimmy Lyons on reeds, Ted Curson on trumpet,
Roswell Rudd on trombone, Henry Grimes on bass and Sonny Murray on drums, on
rehearsals Taylor was repeating the lines for the musicians, so to prevent “western notation blocks total absorption in
the ‘action’ playing”. [from Unit
Structures liner notes]
In the few
years following ‘Pots’ and the other
compositions for the album, Taylor developed the rhythmic aspect of the music
thanks to drummers as Sunny Murray and Andrew Cyrille. Conscious of the
developments in Cage’s piano music, Taylor
imagined another way to step away from ‘classical’ culture. As in A.B.
Spellman’s Four Lives in the Bebop
Business: “[talking about David
Tudor, Cage’s main collaborator on piano] He's
so detached he ain't even there. Like,
he would never get emotionally involved in it; […] it's a mental exercise in
which the body is there as an attribute to complement that exercise. The body is in no way supposed to get involved in it.”
John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, Barbara Dilley
Cecil
Taylor developed a music based on physical experience of playing, whose basis
are “regular and irregular” rhythms.
Rejecting the “transformed symbols thru
conductor” of the Western modern and contemporary music practice, Taylor practiced both the
reintegration of “all body’s limbs” and the “ultimate
communion” between human beings. Also a dancer, Taylor was conscious that
from the limbs all body movements emanate; "At
the controlled body center, motors become knowledge at once felt, memory which
has identified sensory images resulting social response." It’s the
same idea underlining Indian classical music and its philosophical premises,
Shivaism, as many other non-Western cultures and music practices.
Unit Structures, first Cecil Taylor Lp for Blue Note, recorded
in 1966 at Rudy Van Gelder studios in New
Jersey, and his first fully accomplished work, saw
the application of his creator’s “form is
possibility” program as rhythms, pitches, shapes and contents “arises through the individual experiences
of the performers, their personal history as contained in memory.” [Matthew
Goodheart, Freedom and Individuality in the music of Cecil Taylor]
Cecil
Taylor Unit is at that point in time composed by trumpeter Eddie Gale Stevens,
Jr., altoist Jimmy Lyons and multireedist Ken Mc Intyre, bassists Henry Grimes
and Alan Silva, and Andrew Cyrille on drums. The following Lp Conquistador! was recorded in October
the same year always at Van Gelder’s studios and issued by Blue Note; here
Jimmy Lyons’ alto sax is finally placed side by side with Bill Dixon’s trumpet
on a record. Actually collaborating with the pianist since 1951, and involved
during his career in projects involving many of Taylor closest partners such as
Archie Shepp, drummer Tony Oxley and bassist William Parker, in 1966 Dixon was
also issuing for RCA Victor his first accomplished masterpiece Intents And Purposes, starting the
recording sessions four days later Conquistadors!’s
.
Bill Dixon in Italy, 1980
His wide
intervals, not implying a specific key or mode while relying on timbre and
tone-colors – Dixon was also a painter, as many album covers can directly testify
– were the perfect counter altar for Taylor’s dense cluster, percussive
figures. And while the two basses (Silva’s bowed lines, Grimes lower registers)
generate contrasting parts instead of dictating a pulse whose sense is
suggested through contractions more than using a ‘rhythm section’, Andrew
Cyrille’s textures and Jimmy Lyons rooted in bop melodic phrases are completion
for a music that through the following decades is still at his creative peak.
This is
highly exemplified by a series of astounding, beautiful records that, since the
1970s, Taylor released for labels such as Arista/Freedom
and New World in the US,
Black Saint in Italy and FMP
in Germany.
While attaining a wider popularity through the praise of the critics, a concert
for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, and then a Guggenheim and a McArthur
fellowships through 1973 to 1974, the albums Cecil Taylor issued in this period
are highly explicative of his musical practice.
Some
notable releases are 3 Phasis (New
World, 1979), featuring again Jimmy Lyons, Raphé Malik on trumpet, Ramsey Ameen
on violin, Sirone on bass and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, the two-Lp set Historic Concerts recorded at the
Columbia University in 1979 with Max Roach and released in 1984 by Black Saint,
Alms/Tiegarten (Spree) recorded in
Berlin in 1988 and released on FMP featuring the Cecil Taylor European
Orchestra – Enrico Rava on trumpet, Hannes Bauer and Walter Wierbos on
trombones, Louis Sclavis and Peter Brotzmann on reeds, Tristan Honsiger on
cello, Peter Kowald and William Parker on bass and Han Bennink on drums amongst
the others – while the solo practice is widely witnessed through records as Silent Tongues (Arista/Freedom, 1974),
recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival and exemplifying perfectly Taylor’s
percussive approach to piano, once described as a Santeria’s altar, and 1987 For Olim on Black Saint, that is one of
his most lyrical statements.
William Parker
While
containing a dedication to Julian Beck, For
Olim – Olim being an Aztec hieroglyph meaning movement, motion, earthquake
– as 2004 Algonquin, issued by Bridge
and featuring Mat Maneri on viola, suggests a direct connection with ancient
cultures and rituals. Joseph L. Enderson, follower of C.G. Jung and author of
one chapter of his mentor’s The Man and
His Symbols, talks of the Algonquin archetype of Red Horn, a semi-divine
character usually associated with a thunder bird as the main figure of some rites
at the end of which the beginner was becoming a fully responsible human being. Archetypes
are predictable patterns of inner conditioning that lead to essential changes
and shows between individual development and the ancient initiation rites.
In the
1990s, Taylor activity sees the preponderance of the Feel Trio with long time
associated bassist William Parker and drummer Tony Oxley, beautifully
documented in the 2 T’s for a lovely T 12
Cd FMP box set, without dismissing his larger ensembles and solo performances.
Matthew Goodheart issued a beautiful essay on how the music of Cecil Taylor is
going to develop through rehearsals. But it is also possible to listen directly
to Taylor’s own
words on documentaries such as 1981 Imaging
the Sound, directed by Ron Mann and digitally restored in 2007, or Chris
Felver Allthe Notes, released on DVD in 2006.
“I was young when I met Cecil Taylor: 24 years!
[…] For me, he was an intellectual as much important as James Baldwin. He
opened my eyes on the meaning of black music: our music was something more than
dance, vaudeville music, our music had a history, it was coming out of slavery,
from struggle.”
[Archie Shepp with Samuel Thiebaut]
Bibliography
Nat Hentoff Jazz Is, New York: Random House, 1976
Amiri Imamu Baraka Black Music, New York: Apollo, 1968
