Talk:Cecil Taylor

Sideman & history
I deleted the mention of the disc with Coltrane as a "sideman" date, because it was Taylor's date: it was only later after Coltrane became more famous that it was repackaged as a Coltrane album.

Also fleshed out the latterday history though there's lots more to add. ND 07:52, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

correct -- cecil was the 'leader' of the trane date. i deleted the statement about the date "not being a happy experience" that may have been true for the kenny dorham, but i've never ready anything that says ct or trane were unhappy.

"New York College"?
What is the "New York College" that's referred to? Should that be New York University? Perhaps York College? Someone who knows where he went to undergraduate school should edit this appropriately.

Michael 07:50, 12 Apr 2006 (UTC)

Allmusic.com says that he studied at the New York College of Music which, according to Wiki, merged with the music program of Steinhardt in 1968 (well after Taylor's college years). I'm going to change "New York College" to "New York College of Music".

Loose genre reference
I've amended the lead paragraph to tighten it, I hope, and actually reference the "has been likened". I also deleted the comparison with "modern classical music"; not sure what was meant by this, but it always struck me as a rather loose and unspecific reference. AllyD (talk) 19:04, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Sexuality
Taylor is not "openly gay". He never mentions it in interviews and it is not something that he puts up front in his work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.44.18.83 (talk) 01:01, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

i agree. that statement should be omitted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.232.153.192 (talk) 16:28, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

i removed the "openly" part of the statement. however, the statement as it now sits alone seems out of place and irrelevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.232.153.192 (talk) 16:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Edits "from official biographer of Cecil taylor, with Mr. Taylors approval"
I reverted these malformed edits as they had overwritten the wikified, referenced version of this article. Since they are coming from an IP editor, a Talk page message is unlikely to be seen, hence this message. Please do not vandalise this article with a wholesale overwrite. If there is text to be changed then focus on that text: it appears that the "Personal Life" section may be at issue? If so please discuss prospective changes here rather than deleting material carrying 3rd party sources. And please note WP:COI. AllyD (talk) 18:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)


 * The "Personal life" section was just rendered gibberish, but I am loath to revert as it was previously gossipy and not very well sourced. Unless we have something meaningful to say about his personal life that's based on reliable sources and not rumours and innuendo, we should just remove the section. Fences  &amp;  Windows  00:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I've removed it, now perhaps we can work on a personal life section that doesn't just report rumours about his sexuality? Fences  &amp;  Windows  00:07, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm all for that -- my attempt to combine the two versions was, on reflection, pretty sucky and deletion was best. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 00:59, 1 March 2011 (UTC)
 * However, there are two LGBT-related categories on the article page with absolutely nothing in the article to support their inclusion, and of course, the talk page is tagged with the LGBT project. If you are going to delete entire sections of a biographical article, please removed any categories related to the sections, especially when dealing with a BLP. Please finish the cleanup.  Horologium  (talk) 21:35, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I went ahead and deleted the two cats myself. Please (and this is not directed at any specific editor), if you ever delete a significant chunk of a BLP, take a look at the categories and make sure that your removals don't affect categorization; nothing that is not explicitly addressed in the text of an article should show up in the categorization of the individual.  Horologium  (talk) 01:15, 3 March 2011 (UTC)


 * And I have removed the related WikiProject template from this page. – ukexpat (talk) 02:22, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. I had started looking for sources to support this identification and found a lot speculating and many assuming that he is out, but none with a self-identification. Indeed, in an interview with the NYT he quipped that "Someone once asked me if I was gay. I said, 'Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?' I avoid the trap of easy definition." We did use that quote previously, but on it's own it doesn't really sit well as a 'personal life' section. Fences  &amp;  Windows  23:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Date of birth
Taylor's d.o.b. (as stated in the first sentence of the lede) doesn't seem to be given in the source quoted at allmusic.com. The article's d.o.b. is at variance with a printed source (D.G. Such, 1993). I have boldly updated the opening sentence and the the infobox with his date (and place) of birth as 15th March (not 25th) 1929, taken from Such's book. >MinorProphet (talk) 16:14, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
 * The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz has the 15th, too. EddieHugh (talk) 18:31, 5 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the recent change based on this. Whichever, looks like it needs sourcing in the article. Rothorpe (talk) 14:12, 7 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I learned today that Cecil Taylor had died recently. I had forgotten that I had tried to correct his DoB many moons ago: I have again updated the article, this time with the full refs which EddieHugh and I found back then. >MinorProphet (talk) 11:33, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 11:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Death
As of April 5th EST, reports are appearing on twitter that Cecil Taylor has died. I have been unable to find a source to verify these reports. Before updating the article regarding Cecil's death, please provide a source. 2607:FCC8:910C:2100:C1E6:CACF:F29D:ECAA (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:04, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The article will not be updated to reflect unverified information like this until a reliable source is found that is deemed acceptable. Wikipedia's policy on articles that are biographies of living people is taken very seriously and must be enforced at all times - especially when it comes to changing the article and asserting that a living person is now dead. Hoaxes in the past have caused Wikipedia to be the center of media coverage and internet discussions because this policy was allowed to be violated and unverified edits left unchecked for an extended period of time. We cannot allow this; it's better to be a few days behind any "current information" (Wikipedia is not news) than to risk allowing potentially unverified changes like this to be added.  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   08:24, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll also note that the two references added to the article were either from a blog or not from a location that's peer-reviewed and where verifiability cannot be established. They do not meet the requirements defined here and here and hence have been removed.  ~Oshwah~  (talk)  (contribs)   08:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Confirmed ObakeFIlter (talk) 08:32, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I just reviewed the references supplied next to the death date. Aside from the blog source, the others appear to be reliable upon first glance. I wanted to extend a big "thank you" to those who took the time to locate and add those references. I also appreciate the patience and understanding of editors who may have felt frustrated over the reversion of the article - BLP is a policy that we have to be strict about - especially when it comes to referencing the possible death of a person :-)  ~Oshwah~  (talk) (contribs)   12:42, 6 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The New York Times just released an obit https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/obituaries/cecil-taylor-dead.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rphunt2002 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Španělský sál, Prague recording 1999?
An hour-long video at YouTube called "Cecil Taylor Quartet - Desperado", and uploaded on 31 March 2015, seems to have been published by "Juropa Festival", whatever that is. But it was recorded at Španělský sál, Prague on 3.4.1999. Is anyone able to clarify the copyright status of this recording? Many thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:24, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Allen Chase's research, and my more casual research doesn't support common Taylor narrative
Caleb Morgan Sat, May 13 at 9:39 AM

I'd suggest reading Chase first, because he's more sympathetic to Taylor than I am, and a lot more knowledgeable.

https://allan-chase.com/2019/10/13/cecil-taylors-education-student-writings-and-some-thoughts-on-his-relationship-to-contemporary-classical-music/

Some years ago I decided to look into Cecil Taylor a little more, by trying to follow up on the footnotes in the Wiki entry. There were a few references to academic articles in classical new-music journals. These seemed to support the idea that there was interest in Taylor in the academic new-music world. What I found was very underwhelming. One article that looked at Coltrane, Taylor, and Ornette Coleman --- three completely different figures -- tried to find evidence for the use of pitch-class sets, or cells, in their music, among other structures. The paper was sketchy, tentative, weak, and uninteresting, unless you're interested to know that there were 012's (C-C#-D, A-Bb-B, etc.) in Taylor's music. There were also tentative remarks by Gunther Schuller, who was famously open-minded and highly interested in combinations of classical and jazz styles.

Since my early teens I've had a keen interest in music theory nuggets, as keen as a rooting bear. If there was something to find, consume, try to internalize, I'd do it. Despite my efforts, I could find nothing substantial about Taylor's music. This was also true of a handful of books about Ornette Coleman and free jazz. These were somewhere between disappointing and appalling in how empty they were. I could find nothing substantial about music theory and how it applied to Coleman's music, or Taylor's music. Considering that it had been over 50 years, this lack was significant. It meant that there was no substantial theory because it wasn't necessary. The music had some meaning as performance in front of a public, and some feeling in the moment, but in Taylor's case, no content, no substance, that could be identified, drawn from it. Coleman is an entirely different case than Taylor, but the lack of connection to music theory, the lack of explanation, was common to both. The intellectual landscape was empty. There was nothing growing there when there should have been by now.*

Coleman can be described as playing a wandering polymodal tonality with some embellishing microtones, with simple elements. He was well supported by Charlie Haden, who had great ears, as did Coleman. Not so with Taylor.

Around this time I also heard from a saxophonist, teacher of a course in the jazz avant-garde at NEC, and former Dean of Faculty at NEC, who commented that although he was undecided about what to make of Taylor, that it seemed from his research that most of what was said about Taylor was wrong. Simple projection and wishful thinking. Allen Chase.

Chase was able to go back into NEC's records, to find that Taylor didn't attend the main school. "He was a student in the mostly-forgotten NEC Popular Music program (at one time called the School of Popular Music, and later informally called the Pop School) and majored in Arranging. Most of his private lessons were in arranging, not piano."

Taylor wasn't required to do anything. If he had been, NEC wasn't that rigorous. In my experience, if you wanted to fuck off at NEC, you could, and it had the worst ear-training program of all the schools I had attended, worst of 4. Records and testimonials from this time seem a little sketchy. It's probable that Taylor simply didn't achieve that much. The school is full of talented hard-working kids, also ineffectual dreamers, and all combinations of the two. I have a master's degree from NEC and also taught there, with well-deserved lack of success, as an adjunct faculty, teaching electronic music composition.

Chase: All: Courtesy of the New England Conservatory Archives Article: Schmieder, Rob, “Caravan: 30 Years of Jazz at NEC,” Notes, v. 26 no. 1 (Winter 2000), Boston: New England Conservatory. (Individual photos are credited in the PDF.) Program: Concert programs, 1950-1951. Boston: New England Conservatory. Courtesy of the New England Conservatory Archives The headlines from this information, for those few who care about such details of jazz history and biography, are: He was a student in the mostly-forgotten NEC Popular Music program (at one time called the School of Popular Music, and later informally called the Pop School) and majored in Arranging. Most of his private lessons were in arranging, not piano. His course work included the sort of core classroom music theory that all music majors’ programs have in common: two years of basic harmony, introduction to counterpoint, survey of music history, etc.; plus courses specific to the Popular Music: Arranging major. Contrary to much (most?) writing about Cecil Taylor’s educational background, he was not admitted to NEC as a classical pianist and did not particularly study classical piano at a high level as a focus of his studies there. Also, he was not particularly engaged in the study of composition, 20th-century literature, or new music academically, although he was interested and probably well-informed, and was friends with Ceely and probably other composers. It seems likely he took one influential course in contemporary music, however, and he would have been aware of Messiaen’s music in particular due to that course and teacher, and an important Boston and NEC visit by Messiaen. On the other hand, similarities between Messiaen’s (or other contemporary composers’) and Taylor’s music have been exaggerated, and if they are significant at all, they are not overwhelming or deep. While self-analysis by artists is not always entirely reliable or complete, I see no reason to doubt Taylor’s own basic account of how he assimilated elements of jazz and contemporary classical music. While he was a student, he co-authored a series of columns called “Pop Notes” in a student publication. His interests were clearly in modern jazz piano. (I’ll share scans of those below, courtesy of the NEC archives.) Likewise, his letters to his classmate, composer Robert Ceely, are also full of discussion of current trends in jazz.

Me: Then there is the date with Coltrane. I've only listened to it a couple of times, because I don't like to listen to awful music. Taylor's playing is just bad. At this point, he is pure artist manque. Pure wannabe. No lines, bad time.

It was only when he began to find his own voice, so to speak, that Taylor's music is notable. He didn't "pay his dues." He wasn't classically "trained". There wasn't much training.

There are all the comments by critics that have been picked to make Taylor sound more impressive than he is. These resemble nothing so much as arbitrary responses to Rorschach pictures, except Rorschach pictures actually look like something, and Taylor's music is mostly anarchy, screaming and mumbling. I'll list some of these, all of them wronger than wrong:

Taylor's chord-playing reminds someone of Duke Ellington. No, only insofar as both of them banged, sometimes. "Like 80 tuned drums". No. Taylor doesn't do rhythms, which is what you do with drums, mainly. "Like an atonal Art Tatum" No. Only insofar as they both played a lot of notes. Tatum, despite being drunk, played *good* notes. (Tatum's problem when drunk is rhythm and coherence.) "Capable of improvising a Charles Ives piano sonata or Stockhausen." God, no. If that were true, I'd love Taylor's music. Either rigor (Stockhausen sometimes) or sentiment with wrong-note tonality (Ives) is entirely absent. Another critic plays students a passage with rumbling and a pedal-tone in the bass that lasts 3 minutes. No. I'd suggest that people can listen to anything for 3 minutes, and anything with a pedal-tone throughout will have that modest degree of coherence. The issue is whether it falls apart under its own weight -- the mark of chaos or disorder -- after 3 minutes. There are intemperate remarks by people like Buell Neidlinger which really shouldn't be taken as accurate testimonials. If Taylor was capable of amazing feats, of creating music with this content that was more subtle than Schoenberg or Carter or Bartok, then, where is it, now that the cocaine dust has settled?

Chase identifies crap like this, from Alex Ross:

“A graduate of the New England Conservatory, he was rigorously trained in classical composition and performance, and could fire off precise references to Webern, Xenakis, and, yes, Ligeti.” – Alex Ross, The New Yorker, April 10, 2018

There is Taylor's own hostile, evasive manner when given the opportunity to talk music theory, in in interview I saw on YouTube. This is proof of nothing, but circumstantial evidence that Taylor wasn't comfortable talking about music theory because, well, he didn't like it that much or wasn't that good at it. I'm a former composer, I can claim, partly because I loved pitches, harmonies, understanding them and whatever principles behind them I could. What I or anyone wouldn't do is become belligerent. Even slightly wild men like Jaco Pastorius were said to be excellent teachers who could articulate in clear language what was going on with the nuts and bolts of the music.

There is the lack of interest in and commentary about individual Taylor pieces, because, frankly, he didn't have much emotional or musical range. If you disagree, try to point to different recordings and whether they are varied or interesting from the point of view of harmony, melody, rhythm, texture, form, or anything else except...performance.

A typical performance begins with noodling around a quasi-motive, which over a few minutes gets chewed on, worried. Then, typically, at around the 3 minute mark, hell breaks loose and Taylor starts to skitter, pound, bang. For all his attempts, he doesn't seem to be particularly good at developing or extending musical ideas. This might be because all you can do in trackless wastes is get lost, and Taylor was no Ubermensch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:193:8201:F240:BC0E:AC42:89E7:4978 (talk) 09:42, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

It might strike some as fanciful, but to me the person most analogous to Taylor is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Wilson, the doomed explorer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:193:8201:F240:BC0E:AC42:89E7:4978 (talk) 12:01, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

I could go on. There is little pleasure in speaking of something that proves to be sort of empty and sad. I'm no conservative, but Taylor's press smacks of liberal boosterism. Some people want him to be better than he was.

All that said, I heard Taylor play in a club in San Francisco in the 80's. With the big city blinking, with my attractive date, his music live was exciting for a set. That meant that Taylor had the moxie, the energy, the balls, to pull off something impossible.

I say impossible because it is impossible to make up stream-of-consciousness poetry in the moment that is any good, over a long period of time. What Taylor was attempting or claiming to do was as impossible as the blood-testing machine of Elizabeth Holmes. The difference is the difference between Art and Silicon Valley startups. No one can sue Taylor for fraud, even though the ideas behind his performances were as substantial as vapor. And, in fact, Taylor deserves credit for getting up there and doing his thing. That took courage and audacity, and even earned him a hug from a Jimmy Carter -- probably expressing his animal gladness that the music was over and he wouldn't have to sit there any more -- a basic mechanism behind a good deal of audience applause.

Taylor got up there and did it. All the praise, all the footnotes, basically liberal wishful thinking, sad to say.

Entirely different case with Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton. Each a different case.

He was friendly with self-described composer Robert Ceely. I detest Ceely, even though he is dead. I consider it telling that two fake artists would be friends. That's my only bias in this.

Nor is he some kind of "non-western" artist. He was nothing if not an American avant-gardeist. 2601:193:8201:F240:289A:B376:5D6A:76A1 (talk) 13:50, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

in composition and what I call "informed hedonism". If it sounds good, it is good. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. When I speak of an intellectual vacuum around free jazz, I mean that I've read only four or five of the books about free jazz in Chase's bulging shelf. To me these books, the ones specifically that Chase highly recommends, are intellectually and musically vacant, and to a surprising degree. I mean the Joe Morris book in particular, and a couple books about Ornette Coleman. To the hungry composer questing for information, these books were empty. And anything trying to conflate music theory and civil rights is hopeless.
 * Edited to Add, by Caleb Morgan: Chase and I have different backgrounds and allegiances. He is fairly devoted to performance and the jazz avant-garde.  I am attached to form, it is said, and believe

Second ETA by Caleb Morgan: Re-reading what I've written, I stand by everything I've said, except the use of the word "liberal" to describe the benefit of the doubt that allows the puffery around Taylor to continue. Whatever causes bland, incurious goodwill, it's not precisely political liberalism. I don't want to give fodder to people who want to dismiss free jazz, NEC, the Third Stream project, or much else. I continue to dislike false claims and self-promotion and artistic woo, and to support the need for composition and rigorous theory. Teaching jazz, including free jazz, is sort of an industry now. That students are learning is a good thing. That bad books that are lies-to-students are being written is part of that industry. I can do little better than to quote Hume on metaphysics: "“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Substitute the phrase "free jazz sociology" for "divinity or school metaphysics". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:193:8201:F240:5D82:37FA:A325:A2EC (talk) 11:19, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

Third ETA by Caleb Morgan: Today I listened, for around two hours, to excerpts from around twenty-five pieces, solo and ensemble, spanning decades. Reaction: even worse than I remembered. That's some sad shit. There are little positive critical blurbs on Qobuz, each more fawning than the last. This is why we don't have nice things. It's very clear to me that faced with something nearly unlistenable in every moment, critics are so afraid and so cowed, or so lacking in standards and deep understanding of music, that they make up this strange praise, while saying that this music is not for everyone. No, *Nietzsche* is not for everyone. As always with Taylor, the implication is wrong. He's perhaps ahead of his time, but mostly in his lack of musicality, lack of substance, lack of beauty, lack of rhythm, lack of finesse. And what's with his complete indifference to common sense when it comes to voicings? Half of what he plays sounds like mud. Narcissistic mother's boys have their place, no one should be disqualified for their background. If it sounds bad, it is bad. Period.