Taylor Brings an Abstract Touch to Piano

Pianist Cecil Taylor is one of the few remaining, still actively creative links to the jazz avant-garde years of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Tuesday, in the opening set of his six-night run at the Jazz Bakery, he provided a persuasive musical argument for the continued vitality of his freely spontaneous approach to jazz improvisation.

Garbed in white, wearing dark sunglasses, his long, wispy dreadlocks hanging down over his shoulders, Taylor hovered over the piano, his gaze fixed upon the keyboard. An efficient player, he was not given to particularly dramatic movements, with all the action converging through his hands, which moved with blinding speed and triphammer force.

The set began unceremoniously, with Taylor and his accompanists--bassist Dominik Duvall and drummer Jackson Krall--starting to play while much of the audience was still in the outer lobby. There were no announcements, no apparent tunes, only a nonstop, continuing improvisation for the full 80 minutes or so that Taylor was onstage. At one point, he suddenly removed his hands from the keyboard, picked up a piece of paper from the top of the piano and read what appeared to be an abstract poem. That concluded, he resumed his attack upon the keys.

The music had no familiar reference points. It was not improvisation based upon a tune, a harmony, a structure or a rhythm. It was, in fact, determinedly anarchic.

Was there a there there? Did the moderate-sized crowd, some of whom nodded their heads in response to some kind of presumed rhythm in the turbulent flow of sound, actually hear something that was musically significant, or were they simply applauding enthusiastically for the emperor’s new clothes?

The answer is that Taylor’s music--viewed on the terms by which he presents it--is filled with fascinating experiential values. Heard as an unfolding tapestry of sound, it was comparable to an abstract expressionist painting, devoid of representational character, but making an impact in a purely emotional, nonspecific sense.

That said, however, Taylor’s playing, despite his insistent anarchic spontaneity, was still subject to certain essential principles of music. Like all music, it moved through time; like most music, it was dependent upon the innate structure of repetitions; and like Western music, it was framed within the 12 notes of the chromatic tempered scale.

And, whether Taylor chooses to acknowledge it or not, fundamental musical elements--the elements of repetition and sequence--played a significant role in joining his improvisation with his audience. And those occasional repetitions of phrases and rhythms, the melodic patterns that moved in sequence, one after the other, were the key that opened the door to Taylor’s music, making it possible for listeners to relate to its compelling rhythmic movement and emotional flow.

* The Cecil Taylor Trio at the Jazz Bakery through Sunday, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City, (310) 271-9039. $20 admission tonight and Saturday at 8:30 and 10 p.m., and Sunday at 6 p.m. $18 admission Sunday at 8 p.m.