CECIL TAYLOR Indent

Arista-Freedom AL 1038 (1977)

Although Cecil Taylor has performed and recorded with a wide variety of performers and in various sizes of ensembles (from duets and trios all the way up to orchestras), I've always enjoyed his playing most by itself. Like Duke Ellington and Art Tatum before him, Taylor has the ability to utilise the eighty-eight keys of the piano as his own orchestra, and his percussive, rhythmic attack eliminates any real need for a rhythm section.

Indent is a live recording of a solo Taylor concert from 1973 at Antioch College in Ohio and is a typically fiery performance from the master. Taylor's style owes as much to modern classical or "art" music as to jazz, and parts of "Indent: first layer" sound like baroque arpeggios sped up and warped beyond recognition. The blues can still be heard in his fractured swing rhythms, but most casual jazz listeners may find Taylor's rejection of traditional (or just about any) harmony a bit much for the ears. In addition, the piano sounds ready to break apart at any minute under the strain of his thunderous attack. Yet there is an "ugly beauty" in even the most sonically extreme of Taylor's inventions, and he is just as capable of sublime subtlety as he is of overt excitement. "Indent: second layer, part two" builds gradually, through the use of Taylor's trademark "mirror-image" fingering (in which the fingers of each hand play opposing but equidistant melodies), into the brutal note-cascades of "Indent: third layer".

Since words (or even audio) alone cannot convey the intensity of a Cecil Taylor performance, below is a clip of Taylor performing before the cameras of Ron Mann for his documentary Imagine the Sound in 1980. It's irrefuteable evidence that, love it or hate it, there is nothing quite like the music of Cecil Taylor.

(Imagine the Sound is currently being restored for HD DVD/Dolby Digital, available Fall 2006. To pre-order, visit Ron Mann's website www.sphinxproductions.com. My thanks to Ron Mann for the use of the clip.)