akisakila
AKISAKILA (Japan PA 3004-5)
Cecil Taylor / piano, Jimmy Lyons / alto saxophone, Andrew Cyrille / drums.
Recorded: May 22, 1973 in concert in Tokyo.
Akisakila is the only currently available recording by the Cecil Taylor Unit that captures something of the essence of the trio’s music as it is now being performed live. The essence, it seems to me, is this: Taylor’s music has less to do with the presentation of a particular piece of music (though there are certainly identifiable compositional interests) than it does with the total re-creation/transformation of the sound environment of the listener.
The length of Taylor’s pieces, their “intensity,” is almost entirely directed toward breaking through the listener’s defenses, to completely destroying, to the extent possible, the split between audience-performer. For as long as the music exists as something “out there,” something able to be objectified, so one concentrates on it rather than simply experiencing it. The difference, it seems to me, is crucial. The former attitude approaches the music as a western linear “art” form (able to be codified, commoditized, and finally commercialised) whereas the latter “understands” and simply accepts the music as the organic improvisational sound ritual which it actually is.
The music envelops, but does not overwhelm, the listener; it draws the listener into it, yet leaves space (even in its density) for the listener to exist within it. One may then enter into the musical expression rather than simply witness its realization.
Following from which, this is not really a review as such but only the acknowledgement of the recording of an important musical event. The music is here, limited solely by the LP medium which necessitates that the sound remain enclosed within speaker boxes and that the listener’s environment be un-transformed (to change the record) three times in the course of the hour-and-a-half presentation. Still, in the absence of hearing the Taylor Unit live, Akisakila must be the next best thing.
Henry Kuntz, 1975
Posted:
Saturday, March 24th, 2007, 12:49.
Filed under: bells.
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