# CD review: Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley – 2011 – Birdland, Neuburg 2020: Video, CD covers

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/09/23/cd-review-cecil-taylor-tony-oxley-2011-birdland-neuburg-2020-video-cd-covers/
- Published: 2020-09-23T23:49:33+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**“It was a rare moment – the evening of November 18, 2011. A moment of special 
intimacy. European fans of pianist Cecil Taylor got closer to him than ever before.
It wasn’t like a few years ago, when some 1000 listeners gathered in the Prinzregenten
Theater in Munich; now only exactly 112 fans gathered in the Birdland Jazz Club 
in not very far away Neuburg an der Donau. **

Neuburg is a city dating back to the Renaissance with 28,000 residents, midway between
Munich and Nuremberg. For the past few decades the local jazz club, with its unusually
well-developed program, has drawn music fans from a wide circle to its current beautiful
room in an historic basement vault. Up front – Cecil Taylor, the small, slight man
with great energy, the master of free sounds that rumble like thunder but also tinkle
like splintering glass. What a contrast! And what a musical experience!

In my role as the person responsible from the Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcasting 
service for this recording, I had begun this experience in the afternoon as Cecil
Taylor was warming up. For two hours the 82-year-old musician sat there at the piano,
with his shirttails hanging out, wearing very large white sneakers, running through
chords, chromatic eruptions, and fast monophonic sections. He worked meticulously
as he sensed the place in the music and prepared himself for the moment of entry.
Again and again he played similar figures, and it seemed as though he were sorting
out the material for improvisation in the evening together with percussionist Tony
Oxley, one of his long-time companions.

Then to the concert. Significant tension leading from a seemingly soft passage, 
feeling its way, and then again and again rising to energy-laden high points. Whirling
melodies, clusters, bass figures like the one of the “gnome” in Mussorgsky’s Pictures
at an Exhibition, all together with the rumbling anarcho-percussion of Tony Oxley’s
drum set arranged in an unusual manner. In one part of around 40 minutes and another
of about 15 minutes of music, plus a recitation of lyrical texts accompanied by 
drum, the concert came to a compelling high point of tension. By the way: Cecil 
Taylor used notes, not musical “notes,” but notations that Cecil Taylor had in front
of him – mainly capital letters that he had written one above the other and that
were probably the names of notes. These towers of letters resulted in crooked descending
lines on full-size sheets lying across one another, with the lines growing ever 
smaller. What was a wild, disordered landscape of penciled and red marker lines 
was really the outline for what we heard that evening from Taylor on the jazz club’s
Bösendorfer piano.

Like a giant wave that drags more and more material along with it, growing and unfolding
in unpredictable power, in the first section the energy and dynamics of this concert
duo grew enormously, and then this wave once again ebbed and formed gentle little
islands. The second part began in the last quarter hour of the performance quite
softly, virtually delicate for the way Taylor was playing. At the end of the concert
he came back to this expressiveness, a type of music that has the effect of a poetic
echo of Taylor’s life work. Note the quite laconic ending figure of this performance!

The end of the concert was like the blinking of an eye. Like a self-ironic resolution
of the previously bottled up tension. Cecil Taylor’s music was here the experience
of existence, a gruff unexpected seeking and finding of tones for the moment, an
aesthetic that was unconditionally radical. However, Taylor’s radicality was combined
in this special moment of his late work with a surprisingly relaxed mood. The wild
man at the piano presented himself with an almost childlike playfulness. His music
was perhaps gentler than usual, but in no way harmless; it was still a music without
any compromises. I think that in this recording you can especially find enjoyment
in the intimacy of the venue. You can hear in the sound of the recording that the
room was relatively small, and you can hear from the applause that this was just
a small audience enjoying an exceptional experience. It is wonderful that now more
people can share this music!”-Roland Spiegel, music editor of Bayerischer Rundfunk,
March 2020.

1. Birdland, Neuburg 2011 Part 1a 32:46
 2. Birdland, Neuburg 2011 Part 1b 9:09 
3. Birdland, Neuburg 2011 Part 2 15:28

**Cecil Taylor – piano**
 **Tony Oxley – drums**

⌊Cecil Taylor And Tony Oxley - Birdland, Neuburg 2011 (2020, File) | Discogs⌉⌊Cecil
Taylor And Tony Oxley - Birdland, Neuburg 2011 (2020, File) | Discogs⌉⌊Birdland,
Neuburg 2011 part 2 | Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley | Fundacja Słuchaj⌉⌊Birdland, Neuburg
2011 part 2 | Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley | Fundacja Słuchaj⌉

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