Silent Tongues

Solo performer: Cecil Taylor (piano). Recorded at the Montreal Jazz Festival, Montreal, Canada on July 2, 1974. All tracks have been digitally remastered using 24-bit technology. This is an astonishing piano concert. Cecil Taylor is at the height of his considerable pianistic and conceptual powers here, at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974, and the audience is with him the whole way. It's a remarkable, historic recording. Taylor, by this time, had completely invented his own universal musical language. The first three compositions ("Abyss," "Petals & Filaments," and "Jitney") are flawless, gathering in intensity as Taylor, the psychic geologist, mines gold wherever he goes. The speed and density of his notes raise the listener's metabolic activity; it's like being on drugs. At times, listening to those flurries of clusters and diads are as terrifying as finding a bird trapped in a house. And there's a freakish element here as well --we are witnesses to a Promethean event: Cecil/Superman shaking chords from his fingers like a dog shaking water off of his back. After one climax, the audience cheers like they're at a rock concert. This hour-long performance is also notable for what it lacks: there are no conventional melodies, harmonies or grooves to speak of; no silences for more than one second; not much use of the pedal; no idiomatic piano patterns. And there is no sentimentality. Taylor sounds like he's trying to do away with artifice altogether.