Does it have to suck like a Bob Dylan live concert?











I'm going to see this mad-man in october.

50 minutes non-stop?

But that was 25 years ago--I wonder if he still has the stamina.

So do I.
I'll let you know in October!

So I saw Cecil yesterday evening.
The concert featured Cecil and a drummer - I'm sure I could find his name if I looked it up, but what does it matter.

The show opened with Cecil standing behind some sort of vanes and "reciting" a text while he drummer made sounds on his drum-set. The text was a free stream-of-thought thing for as far as I could judge.
Cecil reciteted the text deliberatly in a way that made it almost impossible to understand anything from it.
Some parts were clearer, he repaeted some words sometimes, he made some random almost child-like cries.
Weird stuff.
At the beginning it vaguely reminded me of the opening of Coltrane's 'Kulu sé mama', it even had some appeal to it. But not a "Oh yeah, keep this going for 15 minutes" appeal. Guess what happened.

After this section, Taylor sat down at the piano wearing what could be best described as some sort of boy scouts-thing: pants to somewhere near is knees, dark brown socks almost just as high up, no shoes, ...

He played 3 or 4 free jazz pieces with his drummer.

Pauze

Repeat - just do the text thing in front of the audience now.

Taylor is an undeniable virtuoso when he's playing the piano.
He manages to play it quicker than anybody else I've ever seen or heard and he's 84 yrs old!
But I must say that for me, his pieces lacked something.
Maybe because I didn't know them, maybe because it's not my style. Both are possible.

The pieces are very lenghty - 10, 15 minutes each -and lack any form of structure or melody.
Those premisces are obviously not too weird when you go to see a free jazz icon.
But what's more, they also lack a distinctive 'character' or 'colour' and evolve so chaotically and rapidly that there aren't even short section with a distinctive 'feel' to them.
The only feeling I had after +/- 2 hrs was 'rapidness'.
He can play very quickly, that's for sure.

I think that for the first time in my life, I attended a concert that I neither liked nor disliked.
I just didn't arrive at relating to it.
An interesting experience nonetheless.

After performing regularly for 13 years now, I'm forced to conclude that no audience ever has as good a time listening as I have playing.

I think there are performers that worry about this and work at giving the people what they want, but it sounds like Cecil Taylor must be the polar opposite of that--plays just exactly what he wants to play.