Cecil Starr

It is a well rehearsed story that some of the major innovators of modern jazz were, in the early 1960s, struggling to get recording contracts or gigs in America. This led players like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor to try their hand across the Atlantic. These players found a particularly warm reception in Scandinavia, and live recordings from any of these in Sweden or Denmark are well worth looking out for. This nicely packaged reissue captures Taylor’s performances at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre, with three bonus tracks recorded at Stockholm’s Golden Circle. For fans of Taylor, the material (with the exception of the bonus tracks which have not been previously released) will be familiar from the Live! At the Café Montmartre and Nefertiti: the beautiful one has come. This set comes with a booklet with the sleeve notes from these previous releases, featuring Erik Weidermann’s insightful comments on the performances and the developments of Taylor’s playing.

Cecil Taylor: The Ensemble - Almeda (1996) {FMP CD 126 rel 2005}
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© 1996, 2005 FMP Free Music Production | FMP CD 126
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Progressive Jazz / Piano

RIP Mr. Cecil. In Memoriam. Recorded live in Berlin at the Total Music Meeting in early November 1996, and released by FMP in 2005, the nearly 77-minute performance ritual Almeda easily stands among Cecil Taylor's finest large ensemble realizations, including Unit Structures (1966), Winged Serpent/Sliding Quadrants (1986), and The Owner of the River Bank, a collaboration with the Italian Instabile Orchestra which occurred in 2004. Almeda's forces are expansive and colorfully unfurled. Here the pianist, poet, and composer was anchored by his regular working unit of bassist Dominic Duval and drummer Jackson Krall, with guest cellist Tristan Honsinger.

Leaving Atlantic Records after the sales disaster of Ringo the 4th, Ringo Starr signed to CBS's Portrait label and returned to the record racks after only seven months with Bad Boy…

Cecil Taylor - Algonquin (2004) {Bridge Records - BRIDGE 9146 rec 1999}
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© 1999, 2004 Bridge Records | BRIDGE 9146
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Creative / Piano / Violin

This four-part suite for piano and violin was commissioned by the Library of Congress, and recorded in performance there in February of 1999. It was composed by Taylor, but the liner notes indicate that what Taylor provided in terms of a score was idiosyncratic – columns of individual notes along with "symbols and scribbles to suggest attacks, transitions, etc." Violinist Mat Maneri took a day to figure out his part based on Taylor's unorthodox score, and the resulting performance is what you might expect: basically a set of four improvisations based on a sketch of musical ideas.

Goodnight Vienna was very much a follow-up to Ringo, on which Ringo Starr called upon his bevy of musical buddies. Most prominent among them was John Lennon, who again wrote the leadoff track, "(It's All Da-Da-Down To) Goodnight Vienna," and played on three songs; also included are Elton John, who wrote and played on "Snookeroo," Dr. John, Billy Preston, Robbie Robertson, and Harry Nilsson. Richard Perry again produced, bringing his strong pop sensibility to the diverse material. The only real fall-off was in the songwriting; the album's Top Ten hits were "Only You," the old Platters song, and Hoyt Axton's novelty number "No No Song," which winked at intoxicants, but little else on the set stood out. Goodnight Vienna was another enjoyable Ringo record, but it lacked the star power and consistency of its predecessor. Still, compared to the rest of his '70s albums, it was a masterpiece.