Silent Tongues

Cecil Taylor

album cover

Making the Piano Talk, in a Different Language

At times when Cecil Taylor is really punishing the piano, you get the sense he might have been happier as a saxophone player. He likes the chords and the sheer mass of sound the piano offers, but wants more individual expression. He mashes distinct sonorities into dancing blurs of color, changes ordinary melodies into rattling spasms of percussion.

For both his phenomenal technique and his unorthodox approach, Taylor is revered as a free-jazz pathfinder—and derided as a provocateur bent on terrorizing those who expect every eighty-eight-key contraption to yield cocktail-hour pleasantries. Taylor's music is, to be sure, challenging stuff. And it's also undeniably personal. It can take years to fully digest the ideas he is pondering, but only a few notes to know that it's him playing. He's one of those rare musicians able to instantly overcome the anonymity of the piano.

This solo performance, from the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival, is an excellent way to first encounter Taylor. It's got his trademark tumult (see the two-part "Crossing"), moments of unexpected melodicism ("After All"), and, of course, outbreaks that come from such an instinctual place, and are so totally unhinged, you suspect even a great mind like Taylor would have trouble re-creating them.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 1974, Freedom/Black Lion
Key Tracks: "After All," "Crossing"
Catalog Choice: Conquistador
Next Stop: Anthony Braxton: The Montreux/Berlin Concerts
After That: Marilyn Crispell: Spirit Music
Book Page: 765