Cecil Taylor - Live at the Cafe Montmartre 1963

Taylor had been a thorn in the modern US jazz world’s side since the mid 1950s with his uncompromising approach to music-making, but up until this live date recorded in Copenhagen by the Danish Debut label he’d not made the decisive steps into free playing that would revolutionise the very basis of jazz rhythm. Here, Taylor, Lyons and Murray race pell-mell into music without metric boundaries, throwing open a Pandora’s box of possibilities that would be investigated intensely by every jazz avant-gardist worldwide for the next 20 years. Additionally, Taylor’s supercharged playing on this date was the first glimpse on record of his ability to sustain such white heat over Coltrane-like stretches of playing time.

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