Looking

Looking Artist: Cecil Taylor
Label: Fmp
Category: Music



Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1
EAN: 4014704000286
ASIN: B000027K2B


Release Date: 1989-12-29

Related Categories:

Avant Garde & Free Jazz Avant Garde & Free Jazz
Related | Jazz | Styles | Music
General General
Related | Jazz | Styles | Music

Listmania:

  1. Great "Self-Indulgent Bullsh*t" (ATTN: Branford Marsalis)
  2. Mind-Blowing piano

Tracks:

  1. Luyah! The Glorious Step
  2. African Violets
  3. Of What
  4. Wallering
  5. Toll
  6. Excursion on a Wobbly Rail

Similar Items:

  1. Riobec

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars Total Taylor.......2006-01-29

"Looking" is an excellent solo concert recorded during CT's return to Berlin for the Total Music Meeting in 1989, a year after his heavily documented and celebrated residence there for the Improvised Music festival in 1988. On this return trip, three separate concerts were captured, each with the title "Looking (Berlin Version)." This solo date was the first, followed by takes by the "Feel Trio" (CT, William Parker, Tony Oxley) and then "Corona" (Feel Trio + Harald Kimmig and Muneer Abdul Fataah on violin and cello).

The solo concert here is an absolutely typical CT effort, meaning that it's an amazing, sustained effort of nearly 70 minutes of punctuated attacks and musical decontructions following what is now an established motif. First, a lengthy main piece that spans tracks 1-2, but is really a continuous work. In it, CT's building up musical themes, then tearing them down, with a mostly continuous medium tempo, occasional extended forays into rapid-fire excursion, sections where he's pounding the poor ivories flat, and growling underneath it all (but no chanting or poetry this time around). Five different short encore pieces are then offered, restating the explorations covered earlier, this time in miniature.

A fine recording captured at the peak of CT's powers, and as good a place to start as any, but where to fit it in the rest of the CT discography? Among CT's now more than a dozen recorded solo dates, I'd rank it below Garden, Silent Tongues, Reinforced Concert (on the In East Berlin 2CD set), Erzulie Maketh Scent, or Willisau. Mostly just because those other concerts were either important milestones in CT's developing art, or offered some refreshingly new approach to the now firmly established Taylor formula. So, while "Looking" is awesome relative to the rest of the universe, it is just a bit more typical than other dates by the master.

Music CD:

  1. La Fiesta! The Jazz Giants in a Latin Mood ~ Various Artists
  2. Slide Show ~ Ralph Towner and Gary Burton
  3. I Love Jazz! ~ Louis Armstrong
  4. Apogee ~ Pete Christlieb, Warne Marsh Quintet
  5. The Big Band Swing Things ~ The Spitfire Band
  6. Heaven ~ Phil Woods
  7. In the Shadows ~ Bob Berg
  8. Monday Night at the Village Gate ~ Herbie Mann
  9. Fragile ~ Junko Onishi
  10. In Copenhagen ~ Johnny Griffin, Art Taylor, Kenny Drew

Music CD

Music CD

Music CD

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Guitar Tribute to Eagles Hotel California ~ Various Artists

Home of the Brave ~ Sin City Six

Insignificance ~ Jim O'Rourke

Cravin' Melon ~ Cravin Melon

Falling for Nothing

Scissorhands ~ Foe

The Legend ~ DJ Screw

Survival of the Illest, Vol. 1 ~ DMX , Onyx , and Def Squad