Sunday, February 17, 2008
Cecil Taylor at PDX Jazz 2.17.08
I am glad I supported PDX Jazz Director/promoter Bill Royston's concept of a weekend that was bookended with Ornette Coleman on Friday and would conclude on Sunday with Cecil Taylor. The integrity these two men have had in being true and consistent to their visions and gifts for the half century is worthy of a thematic weekend, especially when a quartet performance by the likes of Ron Carter and Kenny Barron can be slid in between these two iconic pathfinders.
I'm not sure of the year I first saw Cecil Taylor. It was sometime in the late eighties or early nineties. He played to a two thirds full house on a Saturday night at the old Carolyn Berg Swann Auditorium of the Portland Art Museum. A Bosendorfer piano had been imported from San Francisco for the occasion. He began each of his two sets with several moments of Tai Chi. Emotional memory associated with art is intriguing thing. During today's set by Taylor, I recall how I felt when I first saw him at the piano bench: It was a sense that it is important for folks not to maintain and hold expectations and preconceptions of defined boundaries in music, art, and performance.
Taylor was on a Steinway this time. He turns 79 next month. There was no Tai Chi warmup. He brought music with him (which I don't believe he did last time) as well yellow pages of note paper. His music is of his own vision. It contains its own architecture and emotional language. Frankly, it sometimes it reminds me of the musical equivalent of telling someone off. An acquaintance at the show told me that his partner asked him "why is he so angry?" There is a strong emotional content in Taylor's music to be sure. Yet I maintain that anyone who takes a bit of time to listen will realize that it is not all about noodling and off the top of one's head improvisation. Patterns become evident and return. Dramas get played out between themes and rhythms. Forces are defined and then attract and oppose other forces.
It can be an effort. I believe anyone less than a fully devoted listening program to this artist and the few others who live exclusively in this kind of world of sound will drift away from it, at least from time to time. At one break point I saw a couple dozen folks leave after about 35 minutes or so. I started to stir and decided to engage my "Tabula Rosa poetry reading mind." And then he stopped playing and started reading.
He introduced them as words and not as a poem or composition . I jotted down some of his images and lines. "Rotational Deliverence ...Interconnected Membranes...Cylinrical Invisibility...Equivnocturnal Priests...Adoooa Addoooa" Even a humorous allusion to jazz showed up "Blakey Blakey, The Artful One." After the reading, he returned to the keyboard again with more textures and waring arpeggios until he got up from his bench, looking dazed and tired. He then bowed and signaled to the house manager he had one more up his sleeve, and after completing that brief piece with a kind of plunky upbeat, he put on his dark glasses, bowed again and made his way off the stage.
This concert did not have any where near the impact that Taylor's performance had on me a decade and a half ago. Nor did it seem to be on par with this Seattle 2001 Cecil Taylor visit. Part of that may be the context of this weekend. This was my fourth act of the festival in three consecutive days (including today's overlong opening act of very talented and unique bass player Glen Moore and the less extraordinary saxophone playing of Rob Scheps) and I was feeling the duration of the weekend. But also it is clear that Taylor is now a Lion in Winter. I am listening to a 1967 solo performance and it is overbrimming with energy, ideas, shifting shapes and moods. Still, today was time well spent. I complete reading of AB Spellman's essays on Ornette Coleman with insight and appreciation I would not have otherwise and my IPod in recent days or even weeks will provide me with evolutionary and revolutionary voyages with great explorers of soul, rhythm and psyche, namely the likes of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, with some Kenny Barron and Ron Carter thrown in for good balance and measure.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:20 AM
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