Cecil Taylor: Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!
Author: Marcus O'Dair
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Cecil Taylor (t) |
Label: |
MPS |
Magazine Review Date: |
August/2012 |
Catalogue Number: |
441172 CD |
RecordDate: |
14 September 1980 |
If the charge that Cecil Taylor sounds like an explosion in a piano factory is worth answering at all, then the reply, surely, is that his music is extraordinary not only for the shock and awe it continues to command but for the fact that, in all the fury and frenzy, he is playing the right notes. This set, originally issued in 1981 but now re-mastered and with new liner notes from Alexander von Schlippenbach, finds Cecil – sorry, Mr Taylor – alone with a Bösendorfer Imperial Grand. We get the usual tone clusters and attack; in his hands, the piano really does sound like it belongs in the percussion family. But Taylor also proves himself a phenomenally sensitive player, as well as being as vigorous and vivid and virtuosic as anything in jazz (or beyond: he channels Beethoven as well as boogie and blues and Bud Powell). Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!, the pianist wrote in the studio guest book when the tape stopped rolling. Nuff said.
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