RIP, Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)

"My favorite Cecil Taylor story is secondhand. I used to see him play at the Knitting Factory in the late 1980s when I was fortunate to live a few blocks away. I would often sit in the audience with Irving Stone and his wife, Stephanie. (It’s after Stone that John Zorn named the venue he founded, the Stone.) Taylor was late to a show one night, and Stone told of an epic late appearance by Taylor decades earlier. Taylor had been booked on a boat that would tool around Manhattan while jazz musicians played for a willingly captive audience. Taylor, who was often late for shows, Stone said, was warned not to be late because the ship’s schedule was unforgiving. The night of Taylor’s performance arrived, as did the boat. The audience boarded, along with other scheduled musicians. But no Taylor. They waited briefly, but the schedule had to be kept, and the boat left the dock. And then, of course, arrived Cecil Taylor, running to the end of the dock, unable to reach the boat, his eager audience stranded aboard, watching his figure fade in the distance. Judging by how late he was to the Knitting Factory that night, Taylor had never learned his lesson, though of course his audience, me included, was going nowhere. We waited. He arrived, and blew our minds. I reviewed a massive Cecil Taylor box set many years ago, and I mentioned to a friend what I’d been working on, and he asked, teasingly, if I had managed to do so without using the word 'cluster.' Cecil Taylor is the musician most synonymous with the word 'cluster' (often employed by critics to describe his playing), except perhaps for Roedelius, Moebius, Plank, and Eno — and, as someone reminded me on Twitter, Cowell. ... RIP, pianist, improviser, genius Cecil Taylor (b. 1929). By Marc Weidenbau"
disquiet
New Yorker: The Revolutionary Genius of Cecil Taylor By Richard Brody (Audio)
W - Cecil Taylor
NY Times: Cecil Taylor, Pianist Who Defied Jazz Orthodoxy, Is Dead at 89 (Video)
Free-Jazz Pioneer Cecil Taylor Has Died At 89 (Video)
Cecil Taylor - Perfect Sound Forever
Cecil Taylor, free jazz pioneer, dies age 89 (Video)
YouTube: Les grandes répétitions, Rare - Cecil Taylor at the Village Gate 1965, Unit Structures (1966) full album, Conquistador! (full)