Performance Details
WEST COAST PREMIERE: CECIL TAYLOR
10/26/95
Center for the Arts Theater at Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission & 3rd Sts.
Tickets: $18, 25; 35 Gold Circle
Modern American architecture had its Frank Lloyd Wright; contemporary creative music has Cecil Taylor. The revolutionary pianist, improviser, composer, poet, and dancer returns to the San Francisco Jazz Festival for the West Coast premiere of his ambitious orchestral work in San FranciscoÕs newest state-of-the-art venue, the Center for the Arts at Yerba Buena Gardens. In this one-night-only event, Taylor will guide a specially recruited 30-piece ensemble through the complex and exhilarating labyrinths of his musical imagination. He will also perform solo piano with all the power and inspiration that has come to define his work over the past 40 years.
Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, Taylor is recognized as one of the most important figures in 20th century music. "More than any other musician, Cecil Taylor personifies the rule-busting, culture blending vitality that has animated much of the most rewarding and enduring music of the past 40 years," writes Gary Giddens of the Village Voice, who named Taylor's 11-CD box set "Cecil Taylor in Berlin 88," "Record of the Decade."
At the age of 65, Cecil Taylor continues to push the musical envelope, refusing to compromise his singular vision or soften the radical edge that he uses to sculpt what the New York Times has hailed as "moments of sheer beauty unmatched in American music."
Jazz Festival E-mail: sfjzzfst@sirius.com
