The Complete, Legendary Live Return Concert by Cecil Taylor
The album’s title is true. The 1973 performance documented here (and released in its entirety for the first time) marked the pianist’s return to the stage. Cecil Taylor was in the vanguard of jazz, spoken of in the same sentences as Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus. Influenced as much by Bela Bartok as Duke Ellington, Taylor brought jazz across the border past dissonance to atonality. Grand designs emerged from fragmentary segments, complete with knotty stops and starts. On several tracks, he plays more violently—and faster—than any hardcore punk band.
