In The Brewing Luminous: Chapter 6 Excerpt

The current status of The Book, and a sample

Cecil Taylor and the Mendota Players (University of Wisconsin Black Music Ensemble), 1971 — photo by Paul Ruppa

I am currently writing In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music Of Cecil Taylor for publication by Wolke Verlag in 2024. Here’s an update on where things stand:

I’ve conducted some very interesting interviews with trumpeters Stephen Haynes and Amir ElSaffar, both of whom were part of some large ensembles Taylor brought to Iridium in New York every year between about 2003 and 2007. The music made by these groups, which had about 17 or 18 members, was filmed and recorded, but most of it has never been released aside from some footage in the documentary All the Notes, which is streaming in full on YouTube. (It popped up there about a week after I bought a DVD copy on eBay, LOL.)

A full night’s work (two sets, running around 75 minutes each) by one of these groups, called the Orchestra Humane, is on YouTube. It’s extraordinarily beautiful music, much less overpowering than one might expect — it’s clearly composed and thoroughly rehearsed, not like a concerto but in the sense that the players have worked together to develop an entire language and way of making music shared by only themselves. Listen:

One other thing, since several of you have recently become paid subscribers, and I’m very grateful for that: One of the perks of a subscription is that you’re entitled to downloads from Burning Ambulance Music. We’ve got two new releases coming in October, Ivo Perelman & Nate Wooley’s Polarity 2 and Diego Caicedo’s Seis Amorfismos, and a half dozen other great titles besides. If there are any you haven’t heard, email me and I’ll send you a download code.

OK, here we go. Below the paywall, I’ve included an excerpt from the first draft of the sixth chapter of In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor. (To read the full excerpt, become a paid subscriber for $5 a month/$50 a year.) Everything you read is subject to change, but this is where things stand right now.