Under Niagara Falls: Producer Fred Seibert on Cecil Taylor’s Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert

Many artists can make great music. Very few can change the course of musical history. Cecil Taylor was one of the latter. By breaking apart conventions, both on and off of the bandstand, he opened up new realms and possibilities. While Ornette Coleman – another brilliant trailblazer – is often credited with creating free jazz in 1959, one can argue Taylor did so two years earlier at the Five Spot. Chords or traditional melodic conventions were not as critical as they once were. What mattered far more was the sheer emotion conveyed. A review of the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival lineup – where, besides Taylor, appeared Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, and Dizzy Gillespie – just further underscores the radical nature of his music. It’s often easy to view the pianist as a remote artistic destination, a place untouched by others. While this is partly true in the sense that few have been able to emulate his works in any comprehensive way, it is also a falsehood. The reality is that Taylor forged a path for many of the artists who today push the boundaries of music. He taught the younger generation in two different methods – formal study and mere entrancement of the listener. Cecil Taylor – The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert  (Oblivion, 2022) uniquely finds a space between the two. 

The album captures Taylor’s Quartet – with Jimmy Lyons, Andrew Cyrille, and Sirone- at New York City’s The Town Hall on November 4, 1973. The concert followed a five-year hiatus from public performances where his primary focus was serving as a visiting professor at Antioch College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The time away from the spotlight – perhaps an inspiration to some artists who had to phase-out public performances during an era of COVID – seems to have served him well. Of particular note is the composition “Autumn/Parade,” a nearly hour and a half long single piece consisting of a thunderous flurry of notes. Despite its obscene length, the song’s unrelenting aesthetic makes time fly, as if in a moving vehicle racing past a fixed point. 

Of further note is the powerful resonance of Taylor’s 88-keys. While frantically weaving in and out of drums, bass, and saxophone, he never neglects to emphasize the instrument’s timbre or the space between its tones. This aspect of the recording is made even more impressive given its producer-engineer. But at the time of the concert, Fred Seibert was just a young college student with a deep love of music. Despite his somewhat limited experience, one can sense qualities shared with some of the great engineers in history, including Rudy Van Gelder with whom he later collaborated. 

We sat down with Seibert to discuss Taylor’s importance, the concert, and why it took nearly four decades for the recording to reach the masses. In our next posting, we will discuss with Seibert how his experiences recording artists like Taylor led to his impressive career, which includes co-founding MTV. 

PostGenre: Before we get into the specifics of the album, what do you think is so special about Cecil Taylor’s music?

Fred Seibert: Cecil is the quintessential post-genre artist in almost every way. Many jazz people don’t like his music. Those into classical music don’t even recognize him. In many ways, he was a man on his own island. 

When I listen to him, particularly when I saw him live, has always been an incredible experience. It feels like putting my head under Niagara Falls; there’s so much power in his notes that make use of the white noise around him. He never hit a note that he didn’t mean to hit. His craft was so complete. The first time you hear Cecil, you think he’s just banging on the piano, but when you really listen to him, you realize he carefully practiced hitting every one of those notes. He used his fingers as 10 drumsticks. In general, he was a trailblazer. And it goes beyond just his music too. For one thing, he was gay at a time in which it was far less socially acceptable than it is today. 

PG: You recorded this concert as a student at Columbia University. How did it all come together?

FS: Well, a promoter named David Laura showed up at our college radio station [WKCR]. Are you familiar with Chapman Stick?

PG: The instrument?

FS: Yes. 

PG: It looks like a widened fretboard off of an electric guitar with between 8 and 12 strings. The musician usually plays it by tapping the strings instead of plucking them. You can often get many more notes at once from it than on a traditional stringed instrument. When he was in Weather Report, Alphonso Johnson played it from time to time. Oh, and Tony Levin with King Crimson and Pink Floyd. 

FS: That’s right. The Chapman Stick’s inventor, Emmett Chapman, showed up at the radio station along with David Laura. But, anyway, David Laura visited the station a few times and our WKCR team got to know him pretty well. After a few months, Dave told us he was Cecil Taylor’s friend and manager. We were all college students and didn’t know much about the music business, so assumed he was joking. He also told us that over the last five years Cecil taught at universities in the Midwest and had not had a major concert during that time. Dave was putting together a homecoming concert at The Town Hall and asked if we knew anyone who could record it. WKCR picked me to record the concert because, at the time, I was doing all of the station’s recordings. I was excited to do it. 

PG: But Cecil’s folks also made you audition by recording another of his concerts?

FS: It wasn’t an audition, but I did record one of his performances before The Town Hall concert. He was performing down at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and I brought some microphones and a recorder and recorded that concert as well. 

PG: And that performance has never been released?

FS: No. Actually, I’m trying to find the entirety of the recording. We played it on WKCR at some point years ago. But, since then, I’ve only been able to find about half of the concert. But, if I can find the other half,  I’d be interested in possibly releasing it at some point. 

PG: As far as the concert at The Town Hall, the program mentions there was dancing, special effects, and other things besides music.

FS: You know, I don’t recall whether Cecil danced at that concert, but he may have. The first time I remember seeing him dance was at a concert he did years later with a large band at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In the middle of the musical performance, Cecil came out with another dancer and did a series of modern dances, which I know nothing about and found confusing.

The addition of dance makes sense to me though, even if I didn’t always understand it. In his obituary for the [New York] Times, Ben Ratliff wrote, and I’m paraphrasing, that Cecil was more of a performance artist than the stereotypical jazz or recording artist. None of his compositions became standards and almost all of his recordings over the last 20 years of his life are live performances. I don’t think there were any studio recordings during that time. And the dancing fits into that as well. 

PG: Do you feel like he approached music differently by the time of the concert than before he spent those years teaching?

FS: I think so. Whether he believed that or not, who knows.

If you don’t listen too carefully, all of the music from the concert sound completely improvised. But it’s not.  Cecil was great at finding the space between improvisation and composition and how both fit into the specific moment.  

There are two places where the band plays something they clearly rehearsed. [Alto saxophonist] Jimmy [Lyons] has a part that lines up perfectly with Cecil’s and then both go into [drummer] Andrew [Cyrille]’s part before full improvisation. And, later, the same thing happens again. There is also the solo portion of “Spring of Two Blue J’s” where Cecil had something prepared. In later years, especially once he got involved with European avant-garde artists, Cecil seemed to rely on planning and pre-written compositions less, but that was not the case at this concert. 

PG:  “Spring of Two Blue J’s” was previously released, but this is the first time the rest of the concert is made public. What delayed the release of the rest of the concert for almost forty years?

FS: I’m not sure. After we recorded the concert, Dave Laura told me that he wanted to take the second half – the solo and quartet versions of “Spring of Two Blue J’s” – and put it out as a record. The solo version was a little over 16 minutes in length, and the quartet one was almost 23 minutes. You could easily fit them on a vinyl LP with one song on each side.

PG: But the first half is a single 88-minute track.

FS: Right. Dave and Cecil may have decided there was no convenient way to release a song that long on the format that existed at the time. People have recorded single compositions of that length and longer onto vinyl by fading out towards the end of one side of the LP and then fading back in on the next side. But that also seems to take the listener out of the music a little. 

The concert was originally recorded on four-track. I ran that off onto two-track, but I eventually lost the two-track version. I still had the four-track version, but no convenient way to listen to it. It wasn’t until the pandemic that I started putting it all together to be released. Now that we have digital file formats for music, you can make a song last as long as it should, uninterrupted, as Cecil originally intended when he performed it.

Additionally, while “Spring of Two Blue J’s” was released previously, it was on Cecil’s own label. It had a limited run and quickly ran out of print. Cecil never re-released “Spring of Two Blue J’s” or relicensed it anywhere. He may not have even known he had the tapes. There was one release in Italy that was a vinyl rip, not officially sanctioned in any way. So, there were no authorized releases of “Spring of Two Blue J’s” after 1974. And, once I realized that I became even further motivated to take the opportunity to put the whole concert together as an album. 

PG: You are releasing the entire concert on your own label, Oblivion Records. Oblivion released a few albums back in the 1970s but seems to have gone defunct in 1975. What was behind the decision to restart the label decades later?

FS: Honestly, it was this Cecil Taylor concert recording. Once streaming became a regular thing for music, I started getting involved in releasing the 1970s albums on Oblivion digitally. We didn’t release any new recordings for the label, just revisited some from years ago. 

But it struck me that it was fairly easy with today’s technology to release this Cecil Taylor album. You didn’t have to worry about all the expenses of putting it out as a physical release or managing inventory. I should also add that I’m not just releasing this album to make money. I’ve decided that, once Cecil’s estate is settled, I will give all of the profit from the album to those entitled to his royalties. So, it’s even more important to keep our expenses low. 

PG: So, no plans for the label beyond this album?

FS: I’m not planning on being actively engaged in the record business unless there’s a specific reason to do so. I’ve had a few talks with someone who has another unreleased concert performance of Cecil’s from 1969. I’ve considered working towards getting the rights to that performance and releasing it digitally, as well. But the current owner is not a fan of going without a physical release. So, it may not happen.

PG: The concert recording was mixed with help by Tony May. Tony has had an incredibly impressive career. What was it like working with him?

FS: It’s interesting. I started to pay attention to Tony when I worked for Carla Bley and Michael Mantler’s New Music Distribution Service back in the 1970s. I was also on the road with Carla as her soundman and road manager. New Music Distribution Service was the first distributor of ECM recordings in the United States, so I was paying close attention to very early ECM recordings. I was obsessed with audio quality in those days. 

PG: More than 50 years later, [ECM founder and producer] Manfred [Eicher]’s skills are still impressive. 

FS: Yes. And Manfred has a sound quality all his own. He’s taken what Rudy Van Gelder established as a baseline for jazz recordings from the 1950s through the 1970s and pushed it one step further. I was lucky enough to work with Rudy for a few releases on Muse Records in the 70s. But Manfred was the first guy to establish a new standard after what Rudy had created. And I paid very close attention to him. 

When  Dave Holland’s Conference of the Birds (ECM, 1973) came out, I thought the album was fascinating. I started digging a little deeper and saw that it was done by Tony May and recorded at Generation Sound Studios in New York. Once the Town Hall concert was recorded, I decided to call Tony and see if he could mix the recording for me. To my surprise, he agreed. He was not only the nicest guy but also taught me a lot about recording and how I could have recorded the concert differently to give me a little more control over the four tracks. He based his method on his work with Burt Bacharach. When he recorded Burt, Tony would make sure to couple the tracks for maximum control. For instance, he would put bass and oboe on the same track so that, with equalization, he could better emphasize one or the other. I was very impressed with Tony’s ability to think like that. 

Over the years, now that so much information is available to us online, I realized how many pop records Tony also worked on. When I met him, he was working at Generation Sound Studios, which was formerly known as Allegro Sound Studios. It was called Allegro Sound Studios when Tony first started working there. Allegro Sound Studios has a deep discography of its own, primarily in Brill Building pop music. At Generation, Tony worked in all kinds of music, with an emphasis on jazz. But part of why he maybe hasn’t gotten enough attention for his work is because he is what I call a classic, quiet professional, who was not shy about helping others.

PG: Was it different than with Rudy Van Gelder than Tony May?

FS: Definitely. Rudy, who was very German, didn’t want to talk about anything. But I learned more about becoming a producer from working with Rudy than almost anyone else. 

The first time I worked with him was on a Junior Cook album. There I was, a 26-year-old white kid from the suburbs who liked jazz but didn’t know too much. Before that, all of my recordings had been on my own direct to two-track to be used on WKCR. The idea of walking into this almost temple of music recording was an unbelievable feeling. 

I like to talk a lot, and when I was at the studio, I asked many questions. Rudy would give me the shortest answer possible to each question. Rudy also had a reputation, which he owned, where he wouldn’t touch any of the equipment without putting on freshly washed and bleached cotton gardening gloves. He did this mostly so he wouldn’t get oils on the microphones.  

After he set up the microphones for our first time working together, I said “take one.” And Rudy did nothing. So, I said it a little louder. Still nothing. The musicians were starting to get antsy. And so, I asked Rudy if something was wrong. He said he didn’t like how I kept looking at him and his equipment. I told him I love his work and was very interested in what he does. He told me not to be. He understood that he only had one job, which was to put the right person in the room. That perspective not only changed my approach to how I was working at Muse records at that time but also the work I do now in animation. My whole focus is on finding the best talent

PG: Speaking of finding talent, the cover artwork for “Spring of Two Blue J’s” was designed by Frank Olinsky, who also designed the iconic MTV logo. Did you meet him while working on this label and then later hire him when you were working at MTV?

FS: No, no. Actually….

Click here for some further conversation with Fred Seibert, this time focusing on his impressive career after recording Cecil Taylor and how it all ties back to the music.

Cecil Taylor – The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert will be available on Oblivion Records on February 15, 2022. More information can be found on the label’s blog. Additional details on Seibert can be found on his website.