Taylor, Cecil
Taylor, Cecil
Taylor, Cecil (Percival), African American jazz pianist and composer; b. N.Y., March 15, 1933. He began piano lessons at age 5; was improvising and composing by the age of 8; later studied percussion. He studied harmony and composition at the N.Y. Coll. of Music; subsequently studied composition at the New England Cons, of Music in Boston; also immersed himself in the Boston jazz scene. He then worked with his own combos in N.Y.; first appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival (1957); gained a name for himself as a performer in the Off-Broadway production of Jack Gelber’s The Connection (1959). He made his first tour of Europe in 1962, and then played in many jazz centers on both sides of the Atlantic; performed at N.Y.’s Carnegie Hall in 1977. He made a number of remarkable recordings, including Into the Hot (1961), Unit Structures (1966), Silent Tongues (1975), The Cecil Taylor Unit (1978), and 3 Phasis (1978). His digitally agile piano style and penchant for extended improvisation made him an important figure in avant-garde jazz circles in his time.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire