Cecili Taylor
Conquistador!

There is also some advantage - I believe - in having an age. One of these is related to forgetting. Forgetting, for example, what led me to have this album. Downloaded, as any kid would do. And I believe not by chance. And forgotten. There, on my iPod. Among a thousand other things. No cover, nothing that reminds me how and why I got there. Then, and I was talking about the advantages of age, one day you come across it by chance and you say: let's listen.

Cecil Taylor, I say this in case there's some kid reading, is a pianist. Also a poet. Considered one of the inventors of free jazz. Plays the piano like he plays the drums. Sure, a thousand miles away from my beloved Teddy, but he's got his own reason. Here he is with Billy Dixon on the trumpet, and a bit of other people, not very famous, but those who know how to do their job. The album consists of three tracks, two to be precise, but with one there's an alternate take. Two long tracks. Free and wild. And strange. Yes, decidedly strange. Because they are certainly free pieces, and definitely attributable to the free jazz category. But also, perhaps, different.

Oh well, let's throw it there, said by someone who knows nothing about it. Free jazz is the refusal of any kind of form. And anger, and black power, and destruction. The same anger, if you like, that is found in a thousand other places. In another thousand moments, by a thousand other people. The destruction of every form, of every canon. And it's beautiful, that anger there, that strength. Especially if in some way you live it. Then, as always happens, even the refusal of form solidifies, and becomes a form itself. So much so that you almost regret the form that was there before. Oh well, it happens like that, it has always happened. Perhaps it will always happen.

Here, perhaps this is one of the disadvantages of having an age. The thought that things repeat, in some way. And always the same. Oh well, maybe. This album here, instead, no. This album here is a strange thing. One of those strange things that occasionally happen. An album that's in the middle. Now, in general, things that are in the middle don't bring much pleasure. Like: make up your mind once and for all. Or: choose, follow the form, or don't follow it. Are you conservative, or progressive? Or what do I know.

Sometimes, instead, when something is in the middle, it communicates something to you, that you didn't feel before, that you won't feel after. You feel energy. An energy that wasn't there just before. An energy that shortly after will be, will become a standard too.

And at the same time, how to say, gentleness. Respect, there it is. As if to say I know what it is that I'm criticizing. And I don't want to throw it in the trash, I just want to say that it can also be done differently. Or, I would like something different, but still, what that is, I don't know. Here, something like that. That you can't say what it is. That maybe, I think, not even Cecil understood it. A thing in the middle, wonderful. Like a balance, unstable and unrepeatable. That lasts a second. That stops, on an album, an album like this.

That I don’t really know how I got there. That I don’t really know what brought me there. But if by chance, it happens to you too, maybe because you read here, oh well, perhaps, the little Andisceppard will have done something good.