1. “Enter Evening,” from Unit Structures, Blue Note Records BLP 4237 (1966).
For Cecil Taylor, poetry and music were inseparable, related, not only in the use of spoken, sung and chanted texts in the context of musical performances, but in the shared creative and philosophical energies of pieces of ‘purely’ instrumental music or textual poetry. Taylor didn’t incorporate spoken poetry into his music until the later 1960s, but his 1966 record Unit Structuresprints perhaps his paramount written text, ‘Sound structure of subculture becoming major breath / naked fire gesture’ in the liner notes, and the playlist opens with the piece ‘Enter, Evening’ from that record.
2. “Ambitus,” from Les Grandes Répétitions, ORTF TV documentary (1968), performance recorded 1966.
In 1968, Taylor appeared as the subject of a documentary in Les Grandes Répétitions, the TV series produced by acousmatic composer Luc Ferrari (other programs featured Karlheinz Stockahusen and Olivier Messiean). Shown rehearsing in what appears to be an abandoned chateau with the Student Studies band of Alan Silva (bass), Andrew Cyrille (drums), and Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone), Taylor is also interviewed and reads an unpublished poem, “Ambitus.”
3. Live performance, featuring poem “Scroll,” TV broadcast, Châteauvallon Jazz Festival, (1973).
One of the earliest documented instances of Taylor incorporating poetry into musical performance appears in this rare TV broadcast from the 1973 Châteauvallon jazz festival (thank god European TV was up to the task of documenting this music!). Taylor recites his early poem “Scroll,” first published in 1965, in the exquisite trio he had with Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons, probably the greatest unsung saxophonist of the 1960s and 1970s. “Whistle into night / Recognize exorcism / blue’s history.”
4. “Ayizan,” from Embraced, Pablo Records 2620 108 (1978).
Taylor’s poems were again included as liner notes to the 1978 album Embraced, recorded at his live Carnegie Hall duo concert with be-bop elder statesperson Mary Lou Williams. The occasion was regarded by many, including Williams herself, as a disaster, with Williams’s more conventional harmonic stylings crashing against Taylor’s flurries of notes; Taylor’s poems, “Choir” and “Language,” were his response to the critics. The concert has received critical reassessment in recent years from the likes of Brent Hayes Edwards, and the track selected here, “Ayizan,” gives a good chance to hear Taylor and Williams within the more spacious setting of a rueful ballad (for all their angular, hard-driving stylistics, something characteristic of both musicians).
5. “Pemmican,” from Garden, Hat Hut Records ART 1993 / 94 (1981).
Taylor’s longest published poem, “Garden,” originally appeared on the album sleeve to his magisterial solo record Garden, from which we hear the exquisite “Pemmican.”
6. “Star-Step,” from Imagine the Sound, Ron Mann (1981), and “Everything that you do”
In 1981, Taylor appeared in Ron Mann’s excellent documentary Imagine the Sound; Mann’s film focused on four musicians, all original participants of the revolutionary Jazz Composer’s Guild, a pioneering collective of free jazz musicians seeking to regain artistic and economic control of their music. (The others are Bill Dixon, Archie Shepp, and Paul Bley.) As well as solo piano performances, Taylor is featured reading the unpublished poem ‘Star Step,’ in which comets spoon effulgent hands and what seems to be an astrological imaginary achieves the intimacy of bodily touch. The film also features an interview with Taylor in which he sets out his philosophy of art as “everything that you do.”
7. “5’04”” and “3’43”” from Chinampas, Leo Records (1987).
Chinampas is the go-to record for Taylor’s poetry: his only release devoted exclusively to poetry, Taylor accompanies himself with timpani, percussion, rustled paper, and multi-tracks. We hear the first track, “5’04,”” which has been beautifully written about by Fred Moten, and “3’43.””
8. “Intro to Fifteen,” from Cecil Taylor / Art Ensemble of Chicago, Dreaming of the Masters, Vol.2: Thelonious Sphere Monk, DIW (1991).
And on a rare collaboration with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Taylor recites a poem punning across the spiritual/survival song “Wade in the Water,” baptism, and voodoo ceremonies.
9. “Untitled,” Artists House Presents: The Jazz Masters from NYU, Cecil Taylor (2004).
Taylor’s later concert recordings are fairly well-documented, albeit more often than not as bootlegs, audience recordings, or low-budget DVD releases than official albums. A recitation with student performers from NYU offers a good glimpse of Taylor’s work with ancient Egyptian systems.
10. “Floating Gardens: The Poetry of Cecil Taylor,” from Cecil Taylor/Pauline Oliveros, Solo/Duo, EMPAC Center (2008).
A DVD release of a concert with Pauline Oliveros at the EMPAC Centre in 2008 documents the two playing solo and duo in a surprising but effective combination. More importantly, however, the DVD contains an hour-long recitation, “Floating Gardens: The Poetry of Cecil Taylor,” in which Taylor reads off stacks of paper spread across a desk, improvising his selections, playing with the sound of words, abstruse, erudite and deliciously/deliriously playful. The entire performance is linked here, made freely available by EMPAC after Taylor’s death in tribute.
11 & 12. “Abata” and “Before Time” / Untitled poem (duo with Tony Oxley),bootleg live performances, Bologna, (2007). Duo with Min Tanaka, Kyoto Prize Commemorative Performance in Arts and Philosophy (2013).
Taylor’s late-life duos with Amiri Baraka, in a series of concerts entitled “Diction and Contra-Diction,” were bootlegged, but have disappeared from the web at the moment of writing, so we end instead with live bootleg recordings from recitals with percussionist Tony Oxley, Taylor’s regular duo partner in latter years; and a performance with another frequent collaborator, dancer Min Tanaka, given at the ceremony in which Taylor was bestowed the Kyoto Prize: the subjects ranging across mythology, science, the emergence of life, the creation of the universe.