Thesis and play: Cecil Taylor at the Whitney, 4/23/16

AP Photo/Barbara Woike

Much like the prior Cecil Taylor performance at the Whitney Museum, Saturday's night's concert began and ended with a poignant display of frailty: the 87-year-old artist, walking with a cane, being led to and from the stage by a small entourage. But what went down in between told a different story. Even more than the first show, Saturday's event was a confirmation of alertness, of vitality, of a man in full control of his expressive faculties. For around 90 minutes, Taylor's presence, his pianism, his poetry, his dramatic poise, and, crucially, his sometimes hidden but always present playfulness, owned the room.

Like the April 14 show, this concert was divided into two halves, but this time, there was no break or personnel change in between, a set-up that made for a more focused experience. More so than at the earlier event, there was a real sense of Cecil and his collaborators building something monumental together over the course of the night. On the surface, Cecil's ensemble here—a quintet with Harri Sjöström on soprano and sopranino saxophones, Okkyung Lee on cello, Jackson Krall on drums and Tony Oxley reprising his subtle electronics role—seemed a bit haphazard, a jumbled assemblage of various past collaborators and one new face (Lee). But in practice, they jelled almost instantly. There was no announcement that this band was an official CT Unit, but in practice, it absolutely was: Taylor was the unmistakable leader, but the group proved to be one of the more responsive and sensitive of the many ad hoc groups he has put together during the past quarter century.

As with the prior show, dynamics were the thing here. The concert began with an absolutely stunning episode of what I'll call Taylor's ballad territory. I'd argue that in his later years, he's reached a place of pure luminous certainty in his sparser playing that feels like a new benchmark in his work. The reflective moments have really always been there, but now they feel sort of laser-pinpointed, as though Taylor were snapping his fingers and transporting you to a realm of otherworldly reverie. Oxley was not really a full participant in the trio with Min Tanaka, but here, he approached the set with what felt like a renewed confidence. His contributions—whooshes and swipes of sound at the edges of the musical frame—were subtle but essential. Lee too proved absolutely integral. Near the beginning of the performance, she waded boldly into Taylor's serene soundworld with perfectly complementary arco accents.

The performance heated up, entering a choppier and more frantic zone. Taylor began to test out his various percussive tactics—there was a lot of flat-palm playing at this show, along with his trademark double-jackhammer two-finger runs. As he often has in the past, Krall seemed tentative at first, limiting himself to choked accents on bass drum and cymbal. But he got his footing and the music took on a rushing density. Krall in full flower is a booming, bashing, clearly bop-indebted player, and many of the louder moments of the performance seemed like sweaty, old-school sparring matches between him and the leader. Taylor's preference of the drummer from the '90s through the mid-2000s has sometimes seemed puzzling to me, but last night, his role made perfect sense. At his best, he brings out the rawer, funkier side of the Taylor endeavor, the part of the pianist that wants to get onstage, roll up his sleeves and spar with pugilistic glee—a part of Taylor's art that was on glorious display at both shows. (I don't think I've ever seen Taylor having so much obvious fun at the keys as he seemed to be during the New Unit set on April 14 and during the wilder moments of last night's quintet performance.) Sjöström too helped accentuate the nastier, scrappier sections of the set, especially when he brought out the sopranino—an instrument with a lovably obnoxious quality, as often heard in the Anthony Braxton arsenal—and really went for it.

The music made its way back and forth across the dynamic spectrum. Taylor would be slugging it out with Krall and then suddenly a space would open up and Lee would be right there to provide gorgeous bowed accompaniment. I'm not sure I can recall a Taylor band so readily equipped to traverse these diverse areas of musical inquiry in such rapid, responsive fashion. Both in Saturday's set and in the April 14 ones, the contrast between Taylor's torrential, tempestuous, Dionysian side and his delicate, exquisite, chamber-like one was especially acute; these days, he seems to be more determined than ever to explore the yin-yang principle that Sonny Sharrock so beautifully articulated: "I want the sweetness and the brutality, and I want to go to the very end of each of those feelings." And fortunately, the band from last night was on him like glue whenever he felt compelled to make the switch. There were moments during the New Unit set on April 14 when I feel like Cecil's sound had been swallowed up by his own band, but that never happened last night; even when they raged, the players let the leader lead.

And never more so than during the extended poetry/recitation/oration/etc. that closed the set. I wasn't keeping track, but I'd estimate that this lasted at least as long as the "main" performance, and I have to say that for the first time while attending a CT performance, I was not wishing for him to go back to the piano. I'd have to say that at this point in his career, when he gets on the mic and really takes charge, embraces his MC side, as it were, Cecil Taylor is just as captivating a vocalist and poet as he is a keyboardist. Last's night reading wasn't just accent or interlude; it was in some ways the meat and climax of the performance.

Taylor stood at the piano bench as he read, starting out in his now-familiar pan-disiciplinary avant-science-treatise mode. "Vegetative propagation," "mycelium of a fungus" (a theme that also cropped up on April 14), "amino acids," "hypotenuse," and so on. The words declaimed, insisted upon, occasionally elongated, growled, extended into a sort of stagily guttural song or abstracted into borderline-goofy glossolalia. (I think there is something in certain moments of Taylor vocal performances that both embraces and satirizes the practice of high-drama oration, but it's impossible to know how much the comedic element figures into his thinking.)

The band homed in admirably, creating a rich yet unobtrusive backdrop. Occasionally, Sjöström would growl in agreement or murmur along, as though playing an obbligato for a singer. Oxley slyly weaved in sampled snippets of Taylor piano when the maestro wasn't himself playing the keys.

About 15 minutes in, something strange happened. Taylor started to speak in sentences, paragraphs, rather than disconnected phrases. He started to tell a story, really. As best I can summarize it, his subject was the arbitrary nature of what we think of as gender, race and culture. It sounds high-minded, but what he was saying actually made a perfect, plainspoken kind of sense. He started out by talking about how the concept of gender was essentially chance-based in nature, the ideas of male and female determined in certain reptile species by environmental factors such as the temperature of the egg, and how the first human couple was perhaps made up of two females. (There's a lot to unpack here, perhaps related to the idea of Taylor as an unabashedly though still tacitly queer artist, with a fierce devotion to a sort of sacred femininity as embodied within the characters of his mother, the great female jazz singers, the spirit Erzulie, etc.; see also: this piece.) Then there was a discussion of how pigmentation, and thus race, was also environmentally determined, and again totally arbitrary. And lastly he went into a sort of prehistory of art, discussing cave paintings from Namibia, presumably these, and how they predated and prefigured the more famous European sites. If I were to risk a distillation of what he was getting at, it was the idea that Western, Eurocentric, patriarchal culture has it wrong. He was arguing for an Afrocentric, female-oriented (or at least gender-neutral)—I could also say fair or just or properly historically attuned—view of human history.

I'm perhaps putting this poorly (though hopefully not misinterpreting the message), but thematically, the talk—and by the end, that's really what it felt like, not in the sense that it was tedious, but that Taylor was spelling out a larger thesis rather than simply reciting words—had a real sense of purpose. As the speech went on, his delivery became softer, more musical. Less growling and more lilting. At various points, he looked out the window as he spoke. A sort of dreamy quality crept in, but at the same time the sense of coherence and conviction deepened. He began to punctuate his words with brief pounding episodes on the keys, played while standing, making him seem almost like a boogie-woogie showman. Then he picked up a drumstick and began to smack and prod the strings inside the piano. Final moments of pure play—impromptu, self-justifying sonic research—it seemed to me.

"Thank you all, that's it!" he said, abruptly wrapping up the performance. He encouraged his collaborators to bow and be recognized. He called for Oxley, almost good-naturedly razzing him—"Oxleyyyy." There was an immediate sense of mirth, and it was clear that this wonderful Whitney residency has been—its many moments of profundity, of visceral thrill, of weird mystification notwithstanding—fundamentally a playground. Not a frivolous space, but a forum of joy and exorcism and see-what-happens collaboration. I sincerely hope that Cecil can continue operating in this manner in the coming years, and that we'll all be privileged enough to witness the results.

Shape and fire: Cecil Taylor at the Whitney, 4/14/16

Cecil Taylor performed at the Whitney last night. He showed up, and he performed as planned. It seemed almost miraculous. I don't mean to suggest that the man is unreliable. But while during the first decade of my life in NYC ('98–'08), Cecil Taylor was a common sight on local stages, the gigs have gradually slowed to a trickle. I could be wrong, but I believe that the "From the Five Spot to the World" event, held last November at Harlem Stage, was the first advertised CT live appearance in NYC since the spring of 2012, when he played solo concerts at both HS and Issue Project Room. I was there for last year's event and crestfallen that Cecil didn't show up. There was, of course, Ornette's memorial last summer, but that's its own special case.

So we have the Whitney's ambitious Open Plan undertaking, a true residency, for which, according to curator Jay Sanders and Phil Freeman's excellent Wire cover story, Taylor has actually been rehearsing in the museum—on a "Yamaha baby grand piano in a conference room on the eighth floor"—in preparation for last night's performance, and for whatever may follow. (I've heard rumors of other possible CT concerts going down before the exhibition closes on April 24, but nothing's solid yet.)

So last night, after a long and somewhat chaotic wait, both in the queue outside and in the enormous fifth floor gallery where the exhibit is housed and the performances are taking place (in front of a huge wall of windows looking out over the Hudson), Taylor took the stage, led by an assistant and wearing a beautiful embroidered jacket, joining Tony Oxley, who—to my dismay, was seated not at his glorious custom drum kit, but at a table filled with electronics—and dancer Min Tanaka.

Taylor began to play immediately. Tanaka began his movement improv off the stage, on the far right side, where I could barely see him. Oxley waded in with a sort of electronic percussive chatter, which sounded to me a lot like a sample-based simulation of his typical drum set, though marred here by a crackling speaker. It was a bit of a cluttered, abrupt scene, visually and sonically. The maestro's transmissions were not coming through, to my ears and from my vantage.

I don't remember what happened exactly, what the turning point was, but it may have been the first time—the first of many—during which Oxley went silent. Tanaka was sort of capering across the stage, making jerky, exaggerated, almost parodic movements (his style, for me, took some getting used to, but ultimately proved to be a fascinating addition to the performance). Taylor was playing what sounded to me like a kind of underwater counterpart to his signature style, sort of hanging and murky and drawn out and drifting. And then, suddenly, the sound became crisper. It may have been Oxley's absence, or my own ears adjusting, or Cecil settling in, or none of the above or some totally other factor, but I felt the performance snap into some sort of focus, and from that point on, I felt little but rapture and privilege.

During the first section of the piece, maybe 10 minutes or so of a performance that lasted roughly an hour, the thought occurred to me, as it did during a 2008 Taylor show at the Highline Ballroom, that Cecil's speed and stamina were on the decline, maybe for good. No. Simply not so. He was playing sparser, quieter figures with a delicate and reflective feel. But the sound shapes started to take on a crystalline clarity. Cecil had not yet "gone Cecil," whirled into one of his trademark high-volume, high-density runs or stabs, but you felt that sensation of utter poise and laser-focused intent. Every note started to seem like a hyper-vigorous act of will, of a sonic shape in the mind coursing through the digit of a hand. You feel, at these passages of focus and momentum at a Cecil Taylor show, like you're inside the artist's brain. Ideas unfolding and filling the room. The piano is everything, but it is incidental.

When this sort of exalted space comes about, too, what happens in my listening brain is that the "soft parts" and the "violent parts," the handy ways we attempt to process this man's art and break it down into gestures, start to conflate. The "soft parts," the caresses and slow figures, start to seem every bit as diamond-cut as the obvious peaks and, last night, seizures, these sudden sonic poses struck, mirrored in space by Tanaka and clipped, hanging curiously and even grotesquely in the air before vanishing. I kept thinking of those single frames you see in one brief illumination from a strobe light. Taylor found his way to the zone of speed and power and volume (physical and sonic) we recognize and attempt to stereotype him with. But the truth is that, when he's on, everything he plays has that intent and will and focus. Every sonic shape is as unique and finely honed and exact as every other. Quieter, sure, louder, sure, but the flow of exactitude is unbroken. You feel every sound-shape transmitting directly from his brain. I have never known another musician to touch his/her instrument with anywhere near the level of confidence and respect that Cecil does. Respect, first and foremost, for the music in his head and for the act of getting it into and out of the piano. Taylor has talked widely of his mother rapping his hands with a ruler to instill proper technique. At his best performances, I feel consumed by this sort of ruthless discipline as channeled and sublimated into a wholly loving act.

As he played, Cecil gazed often at Tanaka, clearly relishing the piece's spatial component. He talked in the Wire story of watching birds as he practiced, of studying the forms of trees. His interaction with Tanaka did not seem imitative or even so much reactive, but you could feel him breathing that air, allowing that in. Tanaka, on the other hand, seemed buffeted by Taylor's sonic actions, at times like a puppet, or like a cartoon character plugged into a socket—as we all were, in a way. He moved up and down the center aisle, back toward the stage, exploring the wall of windows, crouching and twisting and clearly just feeling it all course through him. Oxley eventually reentered, and the electronics found a space within the music. Once the speaker crackle quieted down, there was a brief, magical episode where it seemed that Taylor's lines were being haunted by digital ghosts, the sound sources blurring. I don't have a clear idea of what implements Oxley was using, but I could have sworn I perceived some sort of live remixing going on, with Oxley sampling Taylor and reinserting scrambled versions of his just-played lines back into the real-time performance. Taylor and Oxley acoustic, that exalted duo, it wasn't, and I think Oxley would have been the first to admit that, which is probably why he didn't play for roughly two thirds of the piece. But toward the middle, there were these moments of beautiful, rushing, disorienting electroacoustic density.

And then the last 15 or 20 minutes. Oxley ceased playing altogether, a sort of poignant spectacle in itself. I had my eyes closed for a while, soaking up the clarity of Taylor's lines. Again, the contrast that is really All One Thing. There were some of the bravura runs, punctuated by heartbreaking tenderness. A clear, soft intent that seemed like it could have gone on forever. Ideas made physical, briefly, before disappearing. Emotion and concentration unifying. The poignancy of these moments of Cecil Taylor performance is, to me, indistinguishable from the precision, the mastery. Part of me wishes I could describe it all more exactly; part of me is glad I don't really have to. No one does. We flock to this man, now 87 years old—reflect on that for a second—as to a crisp, determined flame, burning intently, with vehemence but also compassion, for some 60 years. That's really the best way I can describe it, my attraction to what Cecil Taylor does. There is some inner fire that he calls upon in performance that simply burns hotter and truer than anyone else's, and again, not only during the demonstrative moments, but just in the whole sustained now of the creative event.

We're all drawn to that flame, and we all stand in awe of it. And during this extended solo episode that concluded the concert, Min Tanaka—at some point; I'm not sure when; I only know that I opened my eyes and beheld this—went over and actually sort of physically slumped on Cecil Taylor, still seated at the piano and playing, seeming to rest his head on Taylor's shoulder. Taylor exhibited no visible sense of disturbance. You have to assume this sort of thing has happened in rehearsals or private sessions between the two, but who knows. (I'm exceedingly curious about this new documentary on Taylor and Tanaka, which screens on Sunday.) But to me, the gesture mirrored exactly what I feel when I give myself over to Cecil Taylor, a kind of crumpling in the face of, a week-kneed tribute and offering only of awe. Not abject but fervent and, it has to be said, religious.

And in terms of Tanaka/Taylor, this wasn't just a one way flow of appreciation. These two are clearly soulmates. The same goes for Taylor and Oxley. I found myself reflecting last night on the inner sanctum of Taylor collaborators. Jimmy Lyons, whom Taylor likens to John Coltrane in the Wire piece, seems to live at the center. Andrew Cyrille is there too. The Feel Trio too, is near the heart of things, it seems. But the Oxley relationship is special. The long history of duets—beginning, I believe, in 1988, with the concert released as Leaf Palm Hand, and continuing on stages across Europe and later at our temple the Village Vanguard. I cherish this partners-in-crime on-/offstage document.

Tanaka and Oxley were the primary receivers and muses last night. Even though Oxley's contribution was diminished—and I should stress that no official explanation was given for why he wasn't playing physical percussion—he was vital to the feeling of exalted creation and listening that filled the room during that glorious final chapter of last night's performance. Again, I can't resist the urge to want to capture it better. I keep coming back to the ideas of precision as emotion, and of the stillness and the violence in his playing becoming one. I guess I could say one simple thing, which is that last night, Cecil Taylor sounded as good as I've ever heard him. And by good, I mean clear, free, at peace and at play and at liberty to realize the shapes that dance in his mind.

There was a second set, a previously unannounced performance by what was announced as the New Unit, a name that paid clear homage to various earlier Taylor bands. I experienced this set on a whole different plane. There was a sort of casual aspect to the proceedings. Much of the audience filed out, players made their way to the stage. (I recognized various familiar faces from past Taylor groups: Jackson Krall on drums, Albey Balgochian on bass, Elliott Levin on flute and tenor sax, Bobby Zankel on alto and Tristan Honsinger on cello; there was also a soprano-sax player and a female poet, neither of whom I could name.)  It wasn't even clear if Taylor would be playing at all. But he did make his way up, and what followed was a sort of loose, old-school free jazz jam. Moments of inspiration, moments of tedium, but what was striking was the smile on Taylor's face.

You don't get the sense that he gets to cut loose with a group like this very often these days. As in some particularly cacophonous Taylor group performances of yore, his contributions were hard to pick out. But he was clearly after sensation, clearly relishing, just as in the first set, the collective experience he had brought about. (I should say that Bobby Zankel stood way out. I heard fleet, fluid mastery, with shades of Lyons, Dolphy, Ornette. It seems somewhat of a shame to me that he and Cecil have never recorded in, say, a quartet setting.) The performance reached a peak when Taylor himself took to the mic and presided over what had the flavor of a classic Beat-poetry session. His speaking/reading voice is at this point as singular as his pianism: a kind of aristocratic croak, enunciating forcefully a litany of strange, striking terms. I remember "stalk," "alluvium," "fungus." He sounded great reading in front of a sympathetic band—again, something I don't recall hearing him do before. Most of the times I've seen him read or speak, it's been in a solo context, or only as a quick preamble, rather than a fully integrated part of a given set, as it was last night. I've never heard Tzotzil/Mummers/Tzotzil, from '87, but it occurs to me that a new Cecil Taylor vocal recording, where he reads as a band plays live behind him, would be a very welcome thing.

The New Unit set rambled. I got up at one point and wandered around the exhibition. I made note of several items and displays of particular interest: one, an LP jacket, mounted on the wall alongside many familiar titles, for an album of Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon duets (!) from 1992*. Two, a viewing station, with headphones, where you could watch a vivid color video, from 1965, I believe, of Taylor, Lyons, Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray performing. Unlike some of the other footage on view, this was totally unfamiliar to me. I had no time to sit down and take this in, but you bet I'll be back asap.

Taylor is most certainly in residence. He's inviting his friends down, mixing it up. Welcoming the audience to join them, if only tacitly. He was hidden for a while but he's back, undiminished. The appearance seems all the more precious now that we know how rare it is. It may be that we are in the midst of his grandest chapter.

-----

*More info here.