Influence and Musical Style
According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with the performances of Cecil Taylor at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and Ornette Coleman in 1959. In 1964, Taylor co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild to enhance the working possibilities of avant-garde jazz musicians.
Taylor's style and methods have been described as 'constructivist'. Despite Scott Yanow's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music":
Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyonehe goes on to praise Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance," and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision."
This vision is one of Taylor's greatest influences upon others:
Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of that I was really chord conscious. —Archie Shepp, quoted in LeRoi Jones, album liner notes for Four for Trane, Impulse A-71, 1964. Cited inRead more about this topic: Cecil Taylor
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