Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor was born on the twenty-fifth of March 1929 at New York, the son of Almeida Ragland — a Black New York domestic of the principal post-Great-Migration New York Black community — and Percy Clinton Taylor — a Black New York-Long-Island chef. He was raised in the principal Long Island Corona-and-Flushing Black community of the principal post-Great-Migration period.

He was instructed in classical piano from age five — and completed the bachelor's degree at the New England Conservatory of Music at Boston in 1953.

He was hired across the principal mid-1950s at the principal Boston Hot Club and the principal Hot Club-and-jam-session New England jazz-piano community — and at the principal New York Greenwich Village Five Spot Cafe in 1956.

He recorded the principal first Cecil Taylor Trio long-playing-record Jazz Advance at the principal Transition Records at Boston in October 1956 — at the principal post-1956 Cecil-Taylor Boston-and-Transition-Records foundational period. The principal Jazz Advance recording is at this day the principal foundational document of the principal post-1956 American free-jazz piano canon.

He led the principal Cecil Taylor Quartet performance at the principal Five Spot Cafe at New York across the principal December 1956 to October 1958 Five-Spot-Cafe residency period — at the principal post-1956 Greenwich Village free-jazz-and-Beat-literary performance community.

He founded the principal Cecil Taylor Unit at New York in 1962 — at the principal post-1962 Cecil-Taylor-Unit free-jazz performance period — and held the principal Cecil-Taylor-Unit bandleader position from 1962 to 2018. The principal Cecil-Taylor-Unit ensemble included across approximately fifty-six years the principal saxophonist Jimmy Lyons (1932-1986) and the principal drummer Sunny Murray (1936-2017).

He was a principal post-1968 academic-residency artist of the principal post-1968 American historically-Black-college-and-university free-jazz academic-residency period — at the principal Wisconsin-Madison from 1970 to 1971 and the principal Antioch College from 1972 to 1973.

He was awarded the principal 1991 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant Fellowship and the principal 2013 Kyoto Prize for Arts and Philosophy — the principal post-1990 international free-jazz piano-canon recognition.

He led approximately two hundred recording sessions and approximately three thousand commercial performances across the principal 1956 to 2018 Cecil-Taylor commercial period.

He died at Brooklyn, New York on the fifth of April 2018 of natural causes, at eighty-nine.

He is honored here as the principal pianist of the American free-jazz tradition.