In the year 2000, when Bologna was European Capital of Culture, AngelicA Festival, then in its tenth edition, invited Cecil Taylor to hold a concert at the Teatro Comunale - Opera House of Bologna: solo, with his piano (and his dance and his poetry readings) he opened an evening that ended with a rendition of the luminous piece Coptic Light by Morton Feldman performed by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, conducted by Jurjen Hempel.
This unusual juxtaposition (not in the history of the festival!) should not surprise: initially ascribed only to free jazz, throughout the decades Taylor’s music has been re-evaluated in all its formal complexity, and is nowadays recognised as one of the most singular productions in the musical landscape of the Nineteenth century.
The additional uniqueness of this release is that it adds a second CD, titled Rap, to the recording of that memorable concert, which documents the public meeting-interview that Taylor agreed to give in Bologna on the following day.
Moderated by the musicologist (and founding member of the band Stormy Six) Franco Fabbri, and transcribed and notated in its entirety in the forty pages booklet (in English/Italian) by the jazz critic and historian Francesco Martinelli, Taylor opened the meeting by reading a complex statement of his on the definition of music, inclusive of an explanatory glossary at the end. What came after was no less bewildering, with Taylor using the moderator’s questions as a springboard for an explosive tour de force of quotes and references: from the classical ballet stars Katherine Dunham and Maya Plissetskaya and the tap dancers Bojangles and Nicholas Brothers to the petroglyphs of the Hopi Native Americans and the Coptic manuscripts, the structures of Xenakis and the architect Calatrava, the Orisha deities and the dynamics of cell growth in bark, Derek Bailey and Stravinsky…
1. Dance of All Seasons - part 1 26:34
2. Dance of All Seasons - part 2 26:51
3. Dance of All Seasons - part 3 12:35
4. Audience / Applause 01:31
5. Dance of All Seasons / Possessing a Door 10:03
6. The Arc of Suspension 07:33
7. No One has the Ownership of Pure Genius 05:02
8. Through the Devotion to Sound to Make Words 03:20
9. I Have Many People That I Bow To 08:24
10. The Ingredient of Life 11:48
11. And Then Usually You Have a Good Time 03:44
12. No Matter What 03:17
Track 1, 2, 3, 4: Dance Of All Seasons
Cecil Taylor: piano, voice
music and poetry by Cecil Taylor
Recorded by BH Audio at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, May 10, 2000, during AngelicA, Festival Internazionale di Musica, 10th edition, may 5>13 + july 5>6, 2000, Bologna, Italy
Track 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11: Rap
Cecil Taylor: voice
Franco Fabbri: interviewer
words and poetry by Cecil Taylor
Recorded at the Palazzo dei Notai, Bologna, May 11, 2000, during AngelicA, Festival Internazionale di Musica, 10th edition, may 5>13 + july 5>6, 2000, Bologna, Italy
Track 12: Montage of Meanings - No Matter What
Cecil Taylor: piano, voice
Massimo Simonini: montage (of meanings)
music, poetry and words by Cecil Taylor
Montage produced by Massimo Simonini at Home Studio, Vignola, May, 2020
40 pages booklet with photos, transcription and translation by Francesco Martinelli of the words and poetry by Cecil Taylor.
Note - June 2020
track titles have been given by the production and have a merely indicative value in order to follow and identify the subjects and statements discussed by Cecil Taylor in the talk of CD 2. Correspondingly to CD 1 and to CD 2 has been assigned a title, inspired by the talk itself.
Producer - Executive Producer: Massimo Simonini
Mastered in May 2020 by Bob Drake at Studio Midi-Pyrénées, La Borde Basse, Caudeval, France
Design: Massimo Golfieri, Concetta Nasone
