Cecil Taylor

Born: March 25, 1929

"One of my wishes has been realized. I found love. It was difficult, but I found it. Because when Billy Holiday sang, 'You don‘t know what love is,' great singers will tell you… it‘s a partnership. It‘s a sharing." —Cecil Taylor

"Practice, to be studious at the instrument, as well as looking at a bridge, or dancing, or writing a poem, or reading, or attempting to make your home more beautiful. What goes into an improvisation is what goes into one's preparation, then allowing the prepared senses to execute at the highest level devoid of psychological or logical interference. You ask, without logic, where does the form come from? It seems something that may be forgotten is that as we begin our day and proceed through it there is a form in existence that we create out of, that the day and night itself is for. And what we choose to vary in the daily routine provides in itself the fresh building blocks to construct a living form which is easily translated into a specific act of making a musical composition." - Cecil Taylor

Flashing Spirits

By Cecil Taylor

Label: Burning Ambulance Music
Released: 2025
Track listing: Flashing Spirits; Encore 1; Encore 2 (Stone).

Deconstructing Free Jazz

by Robert J. Lewis
September 3, 2025

In the continuously evolving history of artistic expression, certain movements emerge that challenge the very foundations of our aesthetic sensibilities. In the early and mid-20th century, Expressionism and free jazz were two audacious musics that not only broke all the rules but broke the spirit of many well-intentioned listeners. If the terms are not ...

Aru��n Ortiz: Cr��ole Renaissance

by Jack Kenny
August 28, 2025

Cuban Cubism is central to Aru��n Ortiz's musical identity--but in this album, his vision extends far beyond. While the 1930s Negritude movement was a literary endeavor, Ortiz seeks to embody that movement not through words but through music. His compositions channel their spirit with abstraction, tension, and a deep sense of diasporic reflection. Ortiz, ...

Karen Borca / Paul Murphy: Entwined

by John Sharpe
August 28, 2025

Entwined pairs pioneering bassoonist Karen Borca with drummer Paul Murphy in an unadorned duet setting. It arrives hot on the heels of her leadership debut Good News Blues (NoBusiness, 2024). While the latter comprised archival concert tapes of sets from the 1998 and 2005 Vision Festivals, the former is an undated studio session which presents both ...

Remembering Sheila Jordan: Sheila's Blues

by Ian Patterson
August 26, 2025

NEA Jazz Master Sheila Jordan, who passed away on August 11, 2025, at the age of 96, will be remembered as one of the great improvising jazz vocalists--imitated by many, bettered by none. Born in Detroit in 1928, Jordan's life-long love affair with jazz began in the 1940s when she heard Charlie Parker. “After ...

Potsa Lotsa XL: Amoeba's Dance

by Ian Patterson
August 11, 2025

Like an amoeba, whose shape-shifting properties enable it to adapt to its surroundings, Silke Eberhard's Potsa Lotsa expands and contracts according to its needs. Originating as a four-horn ensemble inspired by the music of multi-instrumentalist/composer Eric Dolphy, Potsa Lotsa blasted off with Potsa Lotsa: The Complete Works Of Eric Dolphy (Jazzwerkstatt, 2010). An auspicious debut, Eberhard's ...

Olie Brice Quartet: All It Was

by Mark Corroto
August 11, 2025

Bassist Olie Brice wears the title of Mr. Inside/Mr. Outside with remarkable ease. Equally adept in free improvisation and structured composition, Brice moves fluidly between extremes. His work with improvisers such as Tobias Delius and Mark Sanders on Somersaults (Two Rivers, 2015), or with Paul Dunmall on The Laughing Stone (Confront, 2023), exemplifie his outside approach. ...

Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea (Jimmy Lyons)

by John Sharpe
July 29, 2025

Alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons was underappreciated even at the height of his powers, but to those with ears attuned to the radical innovations of the loft jazz era, he was a galvanizing presence. That his legacy remains under-lit is due in part to his long-standing tenure in Cecil Taylor's incandescent orbit. Lyons was more than a ...

Misha Mengelberg / Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects Of Confucius

by Mark Corroto
July 10, 2025

Come for the music of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg, and stay for Sabu Toyozumi. Or perhaps you are here for the Japanese drummer--the first non-American invited into the ranks of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)--and are thrilled to hear him engage in a distinctly Japanese take on the New Dutch Swing. Either ...