{"id":5708,"date":"2016-04-19T01:06:46","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T01:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5708"},"modified":"2016-04-19T01:06:46","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T01:06:46","slug":"cecil-taylor-at-the-whitney-storming-places-like-hes-always-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2016\/04\/19\/cecil-taylor-at-the-whitney-storming-places-like-hes-always-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Cecil Taylor at the Whitney: Storming Places, Like He\u2019s Always Done"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pianist Cecil Taylor performing with dancer Min Tanaka during “Open Plan” at the Whitney Museum of American Art\/ All Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIf you arrived on Thursday night at the Whitney Museum of American Art<\/strong>\u2019s fifth floor, Cecil Taylor<\/strong> was there to greet you.
\nElevator doors opened and there was Taylor\u2014his image, anyway\u2014in towering proportions as projected on a massive screen, moving fleetly about a piano\u2019s keyboard while wearing a white knit cap, as captured in Ronn Mann\u2019s 1981 documentary, \u201cImagine the Sound.\u201d
\nThe night\u2019s real attraction was an increasingly rare invitation\u2014the chance to see and hear Taylor, who recently turned 87, perform in person.
\nAnd in glorious context, no less: At the far west end of an imposing venue\u2014the largest column-free museum exhibition space in New York City (more than 18,000 feet of open space), at a B\u00f6sendorfer grand piano set against floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson River.
\nA yet deeper context was on display. Taylor\u2019s concert was the prelude to a lovingly curated and wisely broad-minded exhibition and residency at the Whitney through April 24, dedicated to the full range of Taylor\u2019s artistry. \u201cOpen Plan: Cecil Taylor<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d\u00a0the first of five such Whitney programs, places Taylor in the company of a wide range of creative souls: installation and performance artist Andrea Fraser; painter Lucy Dodd; sculptor\/earth artist Michael Heizer; and video\/filmmaker Steve McQueen.\n<\/div>\n

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Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n
\nWhile awaiting a seat on Thursday, you could connect with more than one Cecil Taylor, representing several periods, via video and headphones: Taylor in his late thirties, wearing a black turtleneck and dark glasses, at the piano, from \u201cLes Grand Repetitions,\u201d a mid-Sixties French TV documentary that featured Taylor as well as composers Olivier Messaien and Karlhenz Stockhausen; Taylor, with dreadlocks flailing as he played, in a video excerpt from \u201cErzulie Maketh Scent,\u201d the solo-piano finale of an immense and immensely satisfying FMP Recordings boxed set recorded during a landmark 1988 residency in Berlin; Taylor, playing piano in oddly intimate union with the movements of dancer Min Tanaka, during \u201cWorks & Process,\u201d outside, on Mercer Street, in Manhattan in 1994.
\nThere was a vast library of Taylor recordings at the Whitney\u2019s fifth floor, spanning a half-century of Taylor\u2019s irrepressible and often uncategorizeable music making as well as a fair share of the companies, from major labels to small independents, that release music. (Many of these recordings were on loan from Ben Young, director of Columbia University\u2019s WKCR-FM, who will lead one of several \u201clistening sessions\u201d at the Whitney devoted to Taylor\u2019s music on April 23). The fifth floor holds evidence of Taylor\u2019s many collaborations with dancers and poets, painters and theater directors, including Ralph Lee\u2019s four skull-like masks, used in 1976 production of \u201cA Rat\u2019s Mass\/Procession in Shout,\u201d an operatic restaging of Adrienne Kennedy\u2019s one-act play with music composed by Taylor. (\u201cOpen Plan\u201d will present a new staging, on April 21, directed by Hilton Als.)
\nIt was hard, also, to ignore the beauty and integrity of Taylor\u2019s music simply as visual representation if you peered into the glass cases containing hand-drawn scores in manners that defy conventional notation. Or the power of Taylor\u2019s poetry, which he often recites during concerts, as displayed in another case through handwritten pages of calligraphic grace.
\nAll this was useful background, and yet also unnecessary to the concert on Thursday. Taylor\u2019s music, which some critics describe as \u201cdifficult,\u201d is really quite the opposite. It is powerfully and easily available to audiences especially if you are not prepared or if you willingly dispense with your so-called preparation. Though it\u2019s interesting to be aware of Taylor\u2019s influences\u2014Ellington, for instance\u2014as well as the many artists he has worked with or influenced (drummer Andrew Cyrille, who performed in this exhibition on Saturday, or bassist Henry Grimes, who will perform on April 21, together with poet Nathaniel Mackey), and while it\u2019s enriching (wildly so) to have concentric circles of artistry, criticism, history and politics within which to frame his intentions and achievements, all that is perhaps distracting. The sound of Taylor\u2019s music, along with its energy flow and spiritual heft, are best taken in wholly and purely, breathed in without overwrought consideration.\n<\/div>\n
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Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\nBefore Taylor walked to the piano Thursday night, slowly and with the aid of a cane and an assistant, Whitney staff scurried around. A drum kit was delivered and assembled. \u201cThis is actually two concerts,\u201d announced curator Jay Sanders from the stage. Taylor, who generally does what he wants without inhibition, had apparently changed the script. His performance with longtime musical associate Tony Oxley and Tanaka would be followed by a surprise hit\u2014a set by Taylor\u2019s New Unit, a free-jazz septet.
\nTaylor has long histories with both Oxley and Tanaka. As a drummer, Oxley has engaged in thrillingly charged collaborations with Taylor in many contexts spanning four decades. At the Whitney, he sat before a tabletop electronics console. Taylor has worked since the 1980s with Tanaka; just as Taylor\u2019s music has clear roots in jazz but can\u2019t be defined by that descriptions, Tanaka\u2019s approach to dance includes early training in the elemental Japanese style of butoh <\/em>yet is a distinctly personal vehicle that defies classification.
\nAt the piano, Taylor began softly and gently, as if rippling along the surface of a body of water. Yet this was no sign of frailty. Soon enough Taylor struck keys with percussive power to create dissonant chimes and scribbles of loud sound; if these measured explosions were not enough to make the case, Taylor\u2019s sustained force through a performance that was mostly meditative yet finely and unceasingly focused made its own case for stamina and power.
\nTaylor is a master collaborator, and he manages in each exchange to radiate generosity and compassion without leaning into deference or uncertainty. He simply knows how to listen or, in the case of Tanaka, to watch closely and move in tandem. Which doesn\u2019t mean that there was anything obviously referential in the connection between Tanaka\u2019s movements, sometimes slow and gestural and sometimes frenetic, and Taylor\u2019s piano playing. Like Taylor, Tanaka employs a language that is best understood on an intuitive level, free of hard associations. If the communication between he and Taylor was inscrutable at times\u2014as when Taylor created feverish scrawls of notes while Tanaka moved slowly and then froze, grimacing\u2014it was also undeniable.
\nOxley mostly used his equipment to issue sounds that contrasted with Taylor\u2019s pianism\u2014hollow chimes, metallic pings and clangs\u2014though sometimes also distinguishable wisps of Taylor\u2019s playing, sampled, filtered in. He joined in tentatively at first, and then sat silent for a long stretch. When he re-entered, he seemed to have found his way. He and Taylor connected, not as if in conversation but as if in consonant arcs on a common sonic orbit.
\nThere were passages during which Taylor seemed in duet with Tanaka, or, at other times, with Oxley. For some stretches, they functioned as an unlikely trio. There were sections that took the form of a solo piano recital, with Tanaka and Oxley shaping something of a vague but affecting environment. And there was one final section, with Oxley laying out, when, Tanaka, seeming to have exploited nearly all manner of bodily and facial expression, curled up behind Taylor, first in near embrace and then on the floor behind his piano bench. Taylor, who had played with great restraint and a delicate touch through much of the performance, here offered a yet further degree of tenderness, one we had neither yet heard not; finally, sustained overtones gave way to silence.\n<\/div>\n

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Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court.<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nTaylor\u2019s New Unit was a septet that included three saxophones, cello, bass and spoken-word poet Jane Grenier Balgochian. Though Tanaka returned as part of this unit, too, here motion was a more implicit thing, which is always one theme of Taylor\u2019s playing, at any speed and in any context. Here, the speed was mostly fast, the flow like wave upon wave of ecstatic squall. Which isn\u2019t to say the music lacked structure or definition. Balgochian\u2019s (and Taylor\u2019s, at some points) recitations were obvious keys for ignition; Tristan Honsinger\u2019s bowed cello lines and Bobby Zankel\u2019s often pungent and terse passages on alto saxophone wove through it all purposefully. Yet mostly this was a group statement, somewhat of a throwback to a free-jazz revolution that never really ceased while also simply a celebration of Taylor in the present moment. Taylor clearly reveled in it all, sometimes crashing his forearm into the keys to sound tone clusters and mostly smiling broadly. Near its end, Taylor reached for drumsticks that were on his piano, but then set them down, and said into the microphone, \u201cOK, thank you, gentlemen.\u201d
\nThe New Unit\u2019s raucous sounds were likely quickly forgotten. Not that they didn\u2019t make a point or achieve moments of odd beauty, but rather in deference to the supreme resonance and depth of what had preceded, which amounted to an astounding display of unbound pianism in an entirely fresh context.
\nIn some sense, Taylor\u2019s entire career has been an astounding display of unbound pianism in an entirely fresh context.
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Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n
\nOn Sunday afternoon, I returned to the Whitney for one of the exhibition\u2019s listening sessions, led by painter and muralist Archie Rand.
\nRand, who was formerly chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Columbia University and is currently the Presidential Professor of Art at Brooklyn College, said that he\u2019d met Taylor while in his teens. Once he got to know him, Taylor would let Rand sit near the piano while he practiced for hours on end. He once asked Taylor how he could sustain an improvisation for hours and make it sound as if composed. \u201cIf the music is true,\u201d Taylor told him, \u201cthe form takes care of itself.\u201d
\nRand explained that Taylor\u2019s music\u2014his approach to music\u2014informed \u201cnot just how I conduct my studio practice but the way I conduct my life.\u201d He found in Taylor a sense of liberation from an art world increasingly dominated by strategy and ideology. \u201cCecil has remained free from these pressures,\u201d Rand said, \u201cand he has always been angry about them.\u201d That anger, Rand suggested, is a guard against complacency and conformity.
\nListening sessions involve listening, of course. Rand made a persuasive case for, if not a connection, then at least a parallel between Johnnie Johnson\u2019s piano playing on a Chuck Berry\u2019s 1958 alternate take of \u201cI\u2019ve Changed\u201d and Taylor\u2019s playing that same year, leading a group that included John Coltrane, on \u201cShifting Down,\u201d from his \u201cHard Driving Jazz\u201d album, and between boogie-woogie pianist \u201cBig Maceo\u201d Merriweather\u2019s playing on a 1946 version of \u201cChicago Breakdown\u201d and what Taylor played during a much-discussed 1997 duo-piano concert with Mary Lou Williams.
\nRand pointed out that, in his spoken-word performances, Taylor had an advantage over poets: He dealt with words as pure sounds with associative meanings; he didn\u2019t assume knowledge or context on the part of the listener. Same with Taylor\u2019s music, according to Rand. \u201cCecil expects no sympathy from the audience,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just sit there and eat.\u201d
\n\u201cAnyone who doesn\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 Cecil\u2019s is willingly lying,\u201d Rand said at one point.
\nI think he meant lying to themselves<\/em>, really.
\nLately I’ve been listening to a lot of improvised piano\u00a0while sitting on portable seating in art museums.\u00a0Last month, I wrote about<\/a> pianist Vijay Iyer’s month-long “Relation” exhibition at the Met Breuer, the Met’s new outpost for contemporary art.
\n\u201cThe history of creative music is kind of like the history of storming places,\u201d Iyer\u00a0said. \u201cSo that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing. We\u2019re announcing that we\u2019re here. And if you hadn\u2019t thought that we belong in what you call an art world, you\u2019ll have to deal with us now.\u201d
\nTaylor has been storming places for a very long time. He\u2019s storming them still.\n<\/div>\n
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Photographs \u00a9 Paula Court.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you arrived on Thursday night at the Whitney Museum of American Art\u2019s fifth floor, Cecil Taylor was there to greet you. Elevator doors opened and there was Taylor\u2014his image, anyway\u2014in towering proportions as projected on a massive screen, moving fleetly about a piano\u2019s keyboard while wearing a white knit cap, as captured in Ronn … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cecil Taylor at the Whitney: Storming Places, Like He\u2019s Always Done”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[25,11,387,12,14,388,389,390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}