Search - Cecil Taylor :: Willisau Concert

I wish I had words to describe this CD

Daniel Callahan | Sterling, KS USA | 12/12/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Either you will hear noise, or you will hear genius.



Either you will listen to this CD for, at most, three minutes, or you will listen to it at least once per year for the rest of your life -- and always find something new.



Either you will believe that a child with a hammer could play the piano better, or you will believe that, were Beethoven, Bartok, and Schoenberg somehow in the audience, they would be offering standing ovations at the finale.



Either way, you will not believe your ears."

CT circa 2000: faculties still Intakt

Joe Pierre | Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/14/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"As someone with an extensive Cecil Taylor collection who has followed CT's work as a fan for more than 20 years, I am guilty of at times agreeing with the argument that he has settled into a certain idiom and has been playing the same "song" (not the same note-for-note melody, but rather the same "message" and motifs) since the 1980's. It's for this reason that in my reviews of other albums, I called "Tree of Life" (a solo album from 1991) something of a "greatest hits" record (all the requisite Taylorisms were there, but I just wasn't hearing much new) and "Incarnation" (a group date from 1999 featuring guitar, cello, and drums) novel mostly because of the sidemen. Perhaps as a result of this same impression, along with his general lack of mass market appeal, CT has been woefully under-recorded since 2000. But this is a shame, because Cecil, even now at age 81, has been tearing up the concert scene over the past 10 years (mostly in Europe where he is better appreciated), with landmark duet concerts with Tony Oxley or Max Roach; in trios with Henry Grimes/Pheeroan AkLaff or Dominic Duvall/Jackson Krall; and in groups with Anthony Braxton; while still also performing solo.



"The Willisau Concert" -- a live solo date from Switzerland recorded on the Intakt label -- represents not only one of his most recent published albums despite being recorded over 10 years ago (in 2000), but also a solid argument against the idea that CT is just rehashing the same ideas over and over again. On the contrary, on the first listen, I was pleasantly surprised with a variety of fresh new ideas, along with a more solidified and seemingly less "hurried" balance of musical statements. CT's music reminds me of a painter that adds swatches of color and texture, layer upon layer, only to then dash the canvas with a splash from the entire can, and then builds upon it all over again. That approach is exemplified on this album, with all the trademark Taylor building blocks there -- chords "mirrored" between right and left hands, lower register power chords stamped out on the Bosendorfer's extra 9 keys, and rapid percussive flurries and punctuated attacks over 5 tracks (2 longer pieces and 3 ultra-brief encores) -- reminding me of past solo albums like "For Olim" and "Garden." But there's also something more here -- listen to the kind of call and response (after the 10'30" mark), the beautiful lilting phrases displaying CT's "lyrical" side (after 32'), or the miniature encores distilling his message, along with an overall sense of increased integration of ideas and impression that CT isn't so much searching for something as he did in earlier years (or as was the defining feature of Coltrane's music, in my view), but that he has found it. As the liner notes say, "There is no Taylor style. There is only Cecil Taylor."



For CT newcomers, this a great album to start with -- one of his best solo concerts -- and it would be difficult, or at least very wrong, to try to say that the music is chaos. Although Cecil is in his 80's now, you also couldn't very well say that he's mellowed like so many other jazz artists in their later years, but you can hear a kind of enlightenment. Willisau is one of his best solo concerts recorded, and we can only hope to see more published recordings and that CT keeps going strong.







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