Cecil & Bill

The 1992 Recordings That Stayed Hidden Until 2019...And More!

Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon had a decades-long friendship that occasionally erupted into professional and creative friction. They performed together on fewer than a dozen occasions, including the sessions for Taylor’s 1966 album Conquistador! and a somewhat infamous 2002 concert at the Festival de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville, Canada. It wasn’t until 2019 that one of their most substantial collaborations came to light, though. In June and July 1992, the pair played two duo concerts in Verona, Italy and Vienne, France, and immediately after the second show, they went into a recording studio and spent two days laying down roughly 95 minutes of music, intended for a deluxe package that would have included Taylor’s poetry and Dixon’s visual art…but it never materialized. I saw a mockup of the jacket for a double LP called Duets 1992 on display as part of the Open Plan: Cecil Taylor exhibit at the Whitney Museum in 2016, but it didn’t emerge until 2019, after both men were dead. It’s available now on the Triple Point label run by Ben Young, a friend and confidant of both men (he wrote the book Dixonia, a “bio-discography” of Dixon).

According to Dixonia, the first duo concert, from June 25, 1992, was plagued by amplification problems. But the second one, from July 1, is now available on YouTube…and it’s amazing. Dixon really brought out a different side of Taylor than any other collaborator. This is a must-hear.

Below the paywall, my review of Duets 1992, originally published in the September 2019 issue of The Wire.