I saw Cecil Taylor play at Grace Cathedral last Friday. He's considered of the great jazz pianists of the century(ies) -- a long career and he's 79 now, still going strong -- and is generally acknowledged (mostly by music jazz snobs) to be decades ahead of his time. Being "ahead of his time" also means that his music is pretty inaccessible: an atonal, aggressive approach to playing, like turning the keyboard into a drumset. (Some guy in one of my college classes on Music and Religion called him "a monster" -- in a good way.)
I've never been a fan or had that much direct exposure to his music, but I leapt at the chance to see him for free (I won tix from from a radio station -- I don't know if I would've shelled out $30 per ticket.). I also felt I could "handle it" -- his style of free jazz was familiar to me and I know people who play improvisational atonal stuff, influenced by folks like Stockhousen, Cage, Morton Feldman, blah blah. It's not always for me, but I've had exposure to its vocabulary.
After he was introduced, we clapped and expected him to come out and sit down right away and get into playing. But it was a couple minutes before anything seemed to happen. just silence. Then we saw a figure come out of the shadows from WAAY in the back of the cathedral and start moving forward slowly. Then we heard some spoken words, things about astrophysics, astronomy, balance, etc. He was reading verse -- and he did this for about 10 minutes while walking behind the alter (do Episcopal churches have altars?). he was in a peach color sweater (old guys can wear anything and look cool). Then he sat down and started in.
So I'm glad I went, but it wasn't what you'd call a toe-tapping good ole time. He does make you work, and it's not background music, for sure. Attack is a fitting word (sometimes) for what he does to the keyboard, but he's not always a maniac, either. he does build shapes, big and small, hard and soft, but visualizing the waves of a turbulent sea can describe what most of the night was like.
One of the factors that came into heavy play is the Cathedral's acoustics: they suck. The sound was muddy from where we sat, and there's a 7 second reverb in there -- meaning a sound bounces around for seven seconds in some capacity before completely decaying. That kind of action can make a piano lose so much. the program notes mention the reverb and said taylor would use it as part of the perf. I'm sure from where he sat and what he heard himself playing was as diff experience than the rest of he place. I'm glad I went. I do consider it part if my musical edu-ma-cation at the very least. I downloaded some of his music, too. When I want to go someplace I seldom go musically speaking, it's there for me.
