Cecil Taylor

May 30 - June 6, 1 9 9 6

*** Cecil Taylor

IWONTUNWONSI: LIVE AT SWEET BASIL, VOL. 1

(Sound Hills)

This 1986 solo set from New York's Sweet Basil club begins with a mercifully short three minutes of Taylor's ritual poetry incantations before he sits down at the keyboard for a characteristically explosive performance. The opening minutes feature a slow ratcheting of tension as Taylor lengthens and repeats short motivic cells, then uncoils long whiplike strands of notes that roll in waves over the keyboard. About halfway through the 40-minute [Cecil Taylor]

performance, something seems to click, and the remainder of the set unfolds with Old Testament majesty and power. The music eddies into a still pool (Taylor's touch is finely calibrated, capable of great delicacy as well as great force), and the direct simplicity of this passage stands in startling contrast to the preceding volcanic eruptions.

Taylor makes his way outward and upward from this still point. A purposeful momentum sweeps everything before it. His speed is awesome, but his articulation remains clear. Towering note clusters, spread to the extremes of the keyboards, resonate with sonic detail and scintillate with precisely varied tone colors. There is no pianist as riveting as Taylor when he's at his peak, though on this night he took some time to reach it.

-- Ed Hazell