Taylor, Cecil
Elemental, 2026, CD
Instrument: Piano
Issue: 32.2
Jazz Ruler Type: Avant Garde
Performance: 4
Sound: 4
Score: 83
O’s Notes: Pianist Cecil Taylor was a pioneer of free jazz, with an energetic, percussive style. Fragments is a 2-Disc set featuring Taylor with Sam Rivers (t-sax, s-sax, fl), Jimmy Lyons (a-sax), and Andrew Cyrille (d). The music was captured live at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, France, on November 3, 1969, during the 8th Paris Jazz Festival. They played with so much intensity that Taylor took a 3-year break from public performances afterwards! The music was fully improvised and was at the heart of the controversial, Avant Garde music in the late 1960s. It is being released for the first time now, in 2026, an excellent documentation of the Taylor Unit!
Publicist: Braithwaite & Katz
