As readers of this newsletter know, I am currently working on a book — In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor — for publication in 2024. As I’m (I estimate) past the halfway mark in the writing, I feel like I can talk a little bit about it.
It’s not an investigative, granular biography like Robin D.G. Kelley’s Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, or Aidan Levy’s Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins. (Click those links and buy both those books if you don’t already have them. They’re incredible.) I don’t have access to Taylor’s “papers,” whatever those might be, and there are aspects of his life that I don’t particularly feel like excavating. Although he was a public person, and something of a social butterfly, spending most of his nights out late on the New York scene, his offstage life was in many ways a mystery and a secret, and I am inclined to let him keep his secrets. It’s clear that what was most important to him was his work, so In the Brewing Luminous focuses on that work, charting the evolution of his music — his compositional language, his relationship to rhythm — and exploring the battles (with promoters, with record producers, with venues that kept their best pianos under lock and key when he arrived to perform) that he fought to present it in the manner it deserved.
It’s mostly told chronologically, from his birth in 1929 to his death in 2018, though there are two chapters which will be set apart from the primary narrative: one about his poetry, and one about his work with dancers. It includes brand-new interviews with a broad range of collaborators from throughout his career, as well as archival quotes (from Taylor and others) from the 1950s to the end of his life. It’s the longest book I’ve ever written, and while it’s extremely detailed in some ways, I’m working hard to make it an easy entry point — even if you’ve never heard Cecil Taylor’s music before reading this book, you’ll come away with an understanding of it (and hopefully, the desire to listen).
Anyway, one of the biggest events in Taylor’s professional career happened 35 years ago this month — his residency in Berlin (then West Berlin) from June 16 to July 16, 1988, part of the city’s year-long celebration of itself as Europe’s Capital of Culture. He led a workshop ensemble, teaching them his compositional and arranging methodology; played duos with a series of drummers from around the world; assembled a European big band; and more. All the music was recorded for the gigantic boxed set In Berlin ’88, long out of print in physical form but available digitally from Destination: Out. (It’s expensive, but worth it. The giant book that accompanied the box is available separately.)
When this digital reissue originally came out in 2015, I reviewed it for The Wire. A few months later, they sent me to the Whitney Museum to interview Taylor for a cover story, which was a) his final major interview, and b) the genesis of the book, though I didn’t know it at the time.
My original Wire review of In Berlin ’88 is behind the paywall. Thank you for being a paid subscriber.
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