cecil taylor | archie shepp performance of march 23-28, 1976 at keystone korner, san francisco
Photo: GĂ©rard Rouy
PERFORMANCE OF MARCH 23-28, 1976 at Keystone Korner, San Francisco
SHEPP’S GROUP: Archie Shepp / tenor & soprano saxophones, Dave Burrell / piano, Charles Greenlee / trombone, Cameron Brown / bass, Beaver Harris / drums.
TAYLOR’S GROUP: Cecil Taylor / piano, Jimmy Lyons / alto saxophone, David Ware / tenor saxophone, Raphe Malik / trumpet, Marc Edwards / drums.
A decade ago, a pairing of Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor on the same musical bill would have been an event of major significance. But while Taylor’s music continues to encompass the universe, Shepp has retreated into a narrow eclecticism. Free music for Shepp (when he actually plays freely) has ceased to be exploration but has become merely a style among other styles. This would not in itself be so bad, for Shepp sees himself as something of a black classicist, one who plays the music, traditional and modern, of black people.
But, though he played more here than we have heard from him on any of his recent LPs, his playing lacked imagination, and the rhythmic contexts in which the music was generally set would have been boring thirty years ago. Dave Burrell’s playing (which often consisted of the repetition of one or two chords) was all but superfluous, and Beaver Harris’ talents were wasted on largely metronomic accompaniments. Only on ballads such as “Lush Life” or others was Shepp himself consistently interesting, or at least interesting enough to remind the listener that he was once a major musical innovator.
Probably the experience of hearing Archie Shepp would not have been so incredibly frustrating had it not been for the presence of Cecil Taylor. For the deep emotional stirrings conjured up by Taylor might have rendered any other music irrelevant. On opening night, an hour-and-a-half presentation built around the three horns reached such high-pitched levels of screamed intensity that the Keystone seemed transformed into a place of ritual, of spiritual enlightenment even. I myself felt an almost transcendent rapport with the entire audience, something I have not felt when hearing any other music.
Yet in certain respects this was less compressed, more “obvious” music than that of the Taylor trio. It was more dramatic structurally, but at its best avoided the pitfalls of mere drama, moving unassumingly and with purpose through its various sections - from tension to release and back again. The horns built from high and low-pitched stuttered motifs into their soloist jaunts. One noticed especially the extent to which Jimmy Lyons has entered so thoroughly into Taylor’s music. For while Ware’s and Malik’s solos built around and through Taylor’s rhythmical probings, Lyons’ offerings meshed with them, “swung” with them, explored their more immediately apparent implications.
Ware is a player who is busy working with the legacy left by Albert Ayler, and his statements quickly emerged as shrill flights of frenzy, working and re-working the farthest reaches of the tenor’s range. Malik, meanwhile, is one of the hardest blowing trumpeters I’ve heard, though his lines tend to build more on top of each other than moving straight ahead. His work seems to make greater sense when perceived in retrospect than at any given moment. One could not help but miss the presence of Andrew Cyrille, but Marc Edwards provided a good deal of energy and momentum, if not Cyrille’s easily intense looseness.
Taylor himself, though, was the music’s own inner being - even if he was somewhat less in the forefront of it all than usual. He was the focal point around which it all revolved, and its (harmonic/rhythmic) connection to realms beyond. And in an era when many artists have ceased exploration altogether, Taylor’s openness to growth and his willingness to give of himself so fully at every performance must itself be singled out for praise - at least as much so as the music which, as always, was exceptional.
Henry Kuntz, 1976
Posted:
Monday, March 26th, 2007, 19:48.
Filed under: bells.
| 354 Views.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment | Trackback.
Loading ...