ckk@cmu-cs-g.ARPA (Chris Koenigsberg) (07/10/85)
Before moving to Pittsburgh, I lived in Philadelphia for a few years.
We got decent concerts there. Sun Ra used to play around the corner from
my house, he even hugged me once and whispered in my ear, "You made a mistake,
you did something wrong. Make another mistake, and do something
right!" And I took a guitar lesson from Larry Coryell once.
Here in Pitttsburgh, we were lucky to get Ornette Coleman once, with
the first Kool Jazz Festival....but here I am anyway, hacking...oh well.
But the point of this article is to exclaim about Cecil Taylor! I
saw him in a tiny church basement in Philadelphia (the FoxHole) back
in 1975 or so. There were about twenty five people in the audience.
He and his band played for hours. I was stunned. My friends all
hated it. I was enraptured. They chastised me for my ignorance
in bringing them all there. I couldn't believe how lucky we were to
sit so close to the Man while he created the universe on his keyboard
and Sonny Murray whipped up cyclones on the drums, and Jimmy Lyons
and etcetera filled the jungles with animals on their horns, .....
(there was no bass player)
The albums I have are the Cecil Taylor Unit, 3 Phasis, Unit Structures,
Cecil Taylor In Transition, Silent Tongues, and Indent. I actually
got into Ornette Coleman because Roland Shannon Jackson played drums with
Prime time on Dancing In Your Head, and he had appeared with
Cecil Taylor previously, and I wanted to follow the driblets of
Cecil's influence everywhere they led...even to the Revolutionary
Ensemble, where Sirone plays bass.
Chris Koenigsberg
ckk@cmu-cs-g.ARPA
{harvard,seismo,topaz,ucbvax}!cmu-cs-g!ckk
(412)578-8526 office, (412)362-6422 home
Center for Design of Educational Computing
Carnegie-Mellon U.
Pgh, Pa. 15213