{"id":3882,"date":"2022-02-01T23:05:24","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T05:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/?p=3882"},"modified":"2022-02-03T22:01:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T04:01:02","slug":"niagara-falls-cecil-taylor-fred-seibert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postgenre.org\/staging\/4567\/niagara-falls-cecil-taylor-fred-seibert\/","title":{"rendered":"Under Niagara Falls: Producer Fred Seibert on Cecil Taylor’s Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a> – 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 <\/em> (Oblivion, 2022) uniquely finds a space between the two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PostGenre: Before we get into the specifics of the album, what do you think is so special about Cecil Taylor\u2019s music?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fred Seibert: Cecil is the quintessential post-genre artist in almost every way. Many jazz people don\u2019t like his music. Those into classical music don\u2019t even recognize him. In many ways, he was a man on his own island. <\/p>

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\u2019s 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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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