Cecil Taylor, Gunter Sommer - Riobec

Artist:  Cecil Taylor, Gunter Sommer
Album: Riobec
Genre:  Free Jazz
Labe:  FMP
Recording Date:  1989


This is another of the piano and percussion duets from Cecil Taylor's month-long Berlin stay in 1988. Of all of his sessions with drummers, such as Han Bennink and Louis Moholo, this one comes off as the lightest of them. And that doesn't necessarily mean musically, but rather in spirit. This is Taylor at his most playful, creating moods and shapes and colors to be reacted to emotionally, which is something he almost never does. Sommer, one of the great if underappreciated European percussionists, is content here to be a detailer of Taylor's visions. He places his own percussive imagination at the service of Taylor's pianistic articulation and theatricality and, as a result, it works very well. These players don't come from many places in common, so they move together in a flurry of elegant ideas that are stretched endlessly to the margin before another is produced. The cinematic effect of this music is absolutely uncanny over the suite's four parts. While listening, one gets the impression of a pair of angels making mischief right under the nose of God. The sheer joy and smirky exuberance at play here make for a wondrous change of pace and mood for Taylor, and consequently offer listeners some of his most intimate and compelling music. Too often Taylor is regarded as a stern taskmaster and visionary whose connections to the roots of jazz are attenuated at best. Here the traces of Ellington and Fats Waller are everywhere, plainly there for the hearing. And Riobec, with the wildly comic and frenetic stylings of Sommer, proves once and for all that impression to be erroneous. AMG

Cecil Taylor - piano
Gunter Sommer - drums

1. Riobec 1 - 29:13
2. Riobec 2 - 13:13
3. Riobec 3 - 24:38
4. Riobec 4 - 6:45


FLAC