Cecil Taylor Unit
OBLIVION OD-8
The Complete, Legendary, Live
Return Concert
at
The Town Hall
NYC November 4, 1973
Oblivion Records OD-8
Released digitally February 2022
Cecil Taylor: composer, piano
Jimmy Lyons: alto saxophone
Andrew Cyrille: percussion
Sirone: bass
1. Autumn/Parade 88:00
(quartet)
2. Spring of Two Blue-J’s 16:15 This streaming release is the world premiere
Part 1 (solo)
3. Spring of Two Blue-J’s 21:58
Part 2 (quartet)
Composed by Cecil Taylor
Produced by Fred Seibert
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Recorded live in concert by Fred Seibert
Assisted by Nick Moy
The Town Hall
123 West 43rd Street
New York, New York
Track 1: Mixed by Fred Seibert, Summer 2021
Tracks 2 & 3: Mixed by Fred Seibert,
Jeff Ader, Alan Goodman, David Laura and Tony
May, Spring 1974
Digital transfers from the original analog 4-track
and stereo recordings by Sonicraft, Red Bank, NJ
Promotional CD Mastering: Tom Nunes, Atomic
Disc, Salem, OR
Cover photo by David Spitzer at
Columbia University 1977
Graphics: The Oblivionettes
Publicity: Lydia Liebman Promotions
Essay by Alan Goodman
Special thanks to Mark Seiden
Producer’s note:
of “Autumn/Parade,” mixed in July 2021 for
the first time since its recording.
The original LP of “Spring of Two Blue-J’s”
was limited to 2000 vinyl pressings in 1974
for Unit Core Records, owned by Cecil
Taylor. The only other legitimate release is
by Oblivion Records in 2021, exclusively
on digital streaming platforms. All others
on vinyl, CD, or any other format are
unauthorized bootlegs.
We knew then it was
going to be an event.
By Alan Goodman
We knew then it was going to be an event.
That’s my first memory, nearly 50 years lat-
er, of Cecil Taylor’s “return” concert at The
Town Hall in New York on November 4, 1973.
Cecil had as much claim as anyone to be a star
in that era, in that city, but instead had split to
spend the early part of the 1970s teaching com-
position at the University of Wisconsin and An-
tioch College, where he also devoted time each
day to his own composing. A couple of years
had passed since his last public solo perfor-
mance in New York –the epicenter of new mu-
sic, avant-garde, free jazz, whatever you want
to call it if you need to call it anything– and lis-
teners were eager to hear what he was going to
reveal, especially with a quartet.
“Indent”
Unit Core
Records
1973
As for LP evidence of his music’s evolution,
the most recent touchstone was “Indent,” a solo
piano performance at Antioch released just six
months before the concert at The Town Hall on
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Cecil’s label Unit Core, but it was not widely
heard until it was released years later by Arista
Freedom. In fact, since his groundbreaking LPs
on Blue Note in the mid 1960s, Cecil’s recorded
output was relegated to mostly small, obscure
European labels. The result of all that largely
private exploration and discovery would at last
be on display by Cecil and his longtime collab-
orators, alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, percus-
sionist Andrew Cyrille, and newcomer Sirone
on bass.
“Spring of
Two Blue-J’s”
Unit Core
Records
1974
The album that documented part of the concert,
“Spring Of Two Blue J’s,” was produced and
mixed by my friends and me. It received high
praise. In his book about the New York mu-
sic scene in the 1970s, “Love Goes to Build-
ings On Fire,” critic Will Hermes called it one
of music’s two epiphanies that year (the other
being the Dave Holland release, “Conference of
the Birds.”)
Longtime Village Voice jazz writer Gary
Giddins, who at the time had not yet begun his
column, recalls today that Cecil’s solo on the
first side was his most impressive to date, and
that the quartet movement “climaxed his long
alliance with Lyons and Cyrille and introduced
bassist Sirone.” Of all Cecil’s discoveries in
his musical journey leading to “Blue J’s,” that
record’s breakthroughs were, Giddins says,
the most revelatory and satisfying, and it “an-
nounced Cecil Taylor’s permanent reestablish-
ment in the music world, an end to his margin-
alization, and the evidence of a maturity that
allayed any doubts that he or anyone else may
have harbored during that self-imposed exile in
academia.” In two Voice wrap-ups in 1974, he
called it his favorite album of the year.
Given our involvement in the project –college
students who had never recorded or mixed an
album before, outside of a few, small personal
dates– the praise was enormously gratifying.
What almost no one knew was that “Spring of
Two Blue J’s” documented just one part of the
concert; the shorter, second set. Now, at last, we
can present the rest of that night’s story.
“The Complete, Legendary, Live Return
Concert” includes the first portion of the concert
that has been sitting in a tape box all this time.
It includes the compositions “Autumn/Parade,”
and it’s a feast. Listening to it for the first time in
50 years alongside “Blue J’s,” it’s clear that this
concert was more than a triumphant return. It
was also the concert that established how Cecil
would be performing for the rest of his life, and
how his hunger to explore the limits of human
artistry would make each concert as demanding
on the listener as on the performers.
Why “Blue J’s” was released at the time, and
not the concert’s first set, was strictly a
consequence of recording technology in 1973.
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“Autumn/Parade” is 88 minutes long, and
Cecil is playing almost continuously through-
out. On its own, it would have necessitated a
double-album set, which was considered to be
not commercially viable (The single disk
“Blue- J’s” retailed for $6.50). Plus, each side
would need to be faded down and faded up on
the next side, a solution that is never artistically
satisfying, though it was the solution chosen for
Arista’s Cecil releases.
“Blue-J’s” had a more natural place to break,
with Cecil’s piano solo on Side One and the en-
semble joining him on Side Two, so that became
the record. Thanks to the opportunity today for
digital releases, “Autumn/Parade” can be pre-
sented as it was heard that night, a marathon
of brilliant invention, cascading emotions, and
almost unimaginable synchronicity among the
musicians pouring everything they had into the
performance.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
How we became involved in the concert is a story
in itself.
Fred Seibert was a senior at Columbia Univer-
sity, I was a year behind him, and the school’s
radio station, WKCR, was our second home.
Still known for championing primarily jazz
and classical music, as a non-profit educational
broadcaster we were free from the obligation to
be commercially successful. That gave comfort
in bending the boundaries (and listeners ears) in
both genres to a merry band of counterculture
misfits from a spectrum of ethnicities and races.
There was another jazz station headquartered
just a few blocks up from us on Broadway.
They played the hits and the big names. At a
time when the downtown loft jazz scene was
flourishing and the avant-garde in the U.S. and
Europe was attaining new levels of recognition,
we liked to play the albums that other station ig-
nored. It was more than a hobby, or an extracur-
ricular activity. We approached exposing new
music to listeners like we were on a mission. Be-
ing young and in New York, the WKCR playlist
(well, in fact, there was no playlist) was our call
for representation, inclusion, and acceptance.
If you couldn’t handle everything we played, so
be it. At least we gave you a place to sample it,
24 hours a day (not counting news programming
and music from other cultures that filled weekend
hours). Some of the staff members showed up
for their shifts and went home. Others appeared
to never leave.
One day, into that environment, walked a
fellow named David Laura, who had in tow
inventor and jazz guitarist Emmett Chap-
man. Emmett had come up with an instru-
ment called the Chapman Stick –a 10-stringed
fretted board like a wide guitar neck that was
tapped two-handed, allowing one performer
to play dense polyphonic chords, or lead and
bass simultaneously. Emmett’s innovation is a
story for another time, but Laura’s visit to the
station introduced him to some of the mole-
like creatures who would curl up behind the
piano for a snooze, or burrow into a news booth
with a stack of library books and a pitcher of
coffee from the Chock Full ‘O Nuts across the
street, desperately trying to finish a term paper
in one night.
Laura took note of Fred, an aspiring record
producer at the time and one of the most
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persuasive individuals you will meet in your
life. Fred had launched his own label, Oblivion
Records, with an eclectic mix of blues and
fusion. Oblivion’s catalog was not going to
make anyone wealthy. One of his partners used
cartons of records as a coffee table.
Several months later, Laura was back with a
proposal. He was going to bring the Cecil Taylor
Unit to The Town Hall, and he wanted Fred
to record it. Fred had engineered some things
at the station –live performances over the
radio– but knew only a little about mic placement
and the like, but to hear him with Laura, he was
the perfect man for the job.
To prepare for the date, Fred approached a
former WKCR colleague who was known to
have a four-channel recorder and a collec-
tion of studio quality Neumann microphones
that he had neither purchased nor rented, and
if a crime was committed in obtaining them,
the statute of limitations has long run out. So
along with Nick Moy, Fred’s roommate and
another WKCR stalwart, Fred lugged the
stolen equipment in a cab to West 43rd Street
and set up to record one of the most extraordinary
music performances we would ever hear.
We couldn’t help reflecting that Cecil’s previ-
ous albums receiving any significant distribu-
tion were released when we were high schoolers.
The concert at The Town Hall was an opportunity
to do more than be spectators and enthusiasts of
the history of jazz. This concert gave us a chance
to participate in it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jazz is, above all, the music of freedom.
It makes room for personal expression in
improvisation, a rebellion against formal
composition. Jazz champions a soloist’s style,
and allows embellishment over another mu-
sician’s composition by shaping, caressing,
or attacking with sound. It embraces disso-
nance, reveling in the tension it creates and the
satisfaction of its resolution.
And it swings. Swinging is the ultimate revolt
as it is the revolt against time. Other factors
play into it, such as an emphasis on the “weak-
er” notes that pushes the performance forward
and causes your hips to sway, but it’s that battle
between where the beat should be and where the
musician puts it that forces your feet to move
in a joyous attempt to arbitrate between them, a
celebration of an individual’s interpretation of
time rather than the way math divides it, that
gives jazz its innate jazziness. That small act of
freeing eighth notes from their evenness is noth-
ing short of a musical insurrection.
From the start, Cecil Taylor was working to
achieve freedom through his music. He found
his over a long span.
Most summaries of Cecil’s career do an
incomplete job of representing how his mu-
sic evolved, focusing mostly on his complex
and marathon-like performances that required
enormous concentration and steered clear of
most signifiers that identify jazz. In fact, there
was a progression, and the Town Hall concert
announced his final phase of development.
As a student at the New England Conservatory in
Boston, he studied composition and was influ-
enced by the European art music tradition, but in
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general his studies left him frustrated by a lack of
appreciation for black music and African Amer-
ican cultural treasures. His personal listening
brought him to composers and performers in both
classical and jazz traditions that were on the “out-
side” of typical expression – artists who sound-
ed like no one else and were exploring a more
personal path.
From his earliest recordings, Cecil declared
his independence by reinterpreting composers
who were already on the fringes, or playing
funhouse mirror reflections of traditional
standards. For instance, he was deeply
immersed in the off-kilter world of Theloni-
ous Monk’s compositions but also in Monk’s
decisive choice to hit the notes that didn’t
quite fit. Cecil took it even one step farther. His
version of “Bemsha Swing” from the mid 1950s
is inside and outside the song. There’s this thing
we know that is “Bemsha Swing,” itself a com-
position that was in no way typical. Cecil is
playing it, but he’s also playing with it.
His version of “You’d Be So Nice to Come
Home To” seems more a reflection on the
title and any emotion that might be triggered by
“coming home” than it is a version of the Cole
Porter standard. You’d be so nice to come home
to, even though that includes feelings of tension,
anxiety, fear and defiant joy. Porter had no idea
what he had scribbled down until Cecil Taylor
got a hold of it.
From 1956, both those recordings share the al-
bum that includes “Rick Kick Shaw” a tour de
force where you can hear some of the influence
pianist Lennie Tristano had on Cecil. He uses
the tune to work through phrases and themes
until he’s worked them out, or worn them out. In pressed to find a chord progression. The music
both originals and interpretations, Cecil and his is syncopated, though liberated from harmonic
band are playing with unmistakable jazz feel. presumptions. By the time we get to the bril-
liant Blue Note records “Unit Structures” and
“Conquistador!” in 1966, Cecil has virtually
abandoned rhythmic signposts in his playing,
though the songs have heads and the backing
“Hard musicians adhere to expectations. His fellow
Driving Jazz” musicians match him with their passion, but
United Artists
Records
still provide an access ramp for mainstream jazz
1959 listeners. Passages of intense fury give way to
softer segments as well as to defined statements
composed and performed by his sidemen.

Likewise, on “Hard Driving Jazz” (1959), later “Unit

retitled “Stereo Drive” and “Coltrane Time,” Structures”
Cecil is providing an unfamiliar bed for the oth- Blue Note
er soloists, but he is nevertheless laying down Records
1966
a surface that references the songs, obeys the
conventions of typical comping, and unques-
tionably swings.

“The World of The concert that netted “Spring of Two Blue-

Cecil Taylor” J’s” and now, “Autumn/Parade,” is where you
Candid hear Cecil and his entire band having finally
Records
1960
broken through the bonds of time. As freeing
as it was to swing, Cecil has abandoned even
that boundary. Eliminating swing was the fi-
nal freedom, along with the idea that a “piano
player” should sit at the piano and not get up and
dance for an hour if that was what his perfor-
mance compelled him to do (there was no dance
On the recordings he made for Candid in 1960 at The Town Hall, but dance was coming soon
and 1961, Cecil is still playing jazz even though to Cecil Taylor’s live performances).
on many of the compositions you’d be hard
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And I would argue time ceases to exist for Cecil,
not just in the way a song is metered but also in
the arc of a performance. Cracking the shackles
of time freed him from that thing Captain Beef-
heart called “mama heartbeat,” the orderliness
of a composition that made it… regular. Typical.
Hypnotic. If we are no longer being hypnotized
hearing that heartbeat, we can instead experi-
ence this music like blood running through the
veins, which knows no time and is the essence
of life.
“Conquistador”
Blue Note
Records
1966
Guaranteed – at the end of “Autumn/Parade,”
concert-goers that night in 1973 looked at their
watches and said, “What? That was 88 min-
utes??? No way!”
You lose all sense of time caught up in the way
these musicians fuel each other, at times give
way to one another, build and recede. What
happens at about 3:50 when Cecil’s playing is
suddenly more brittle and in a flash, Jimmy is
matching him? What sets off the flurry of to-
tal engagement that begins to build about one
minute later and lasts about 15 minutes, until an
almost imperceptible shift to a more sparse dia-
logue between Cecil and Sirone? What signals
Jimmy’s reentry at 25:00, or the reduction and
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rebirth at around 40:00 minutes when it’s just
Cecil? What was the impetus for Jimmy Lyons’
restatement of his opening phrase at 49 min-
utes, resetting the stage for the next crescendo?
How had they prepared, or in what manner did
he point to transitions? We can’t know how this
was composed, rehearsed, molded and revised.
We can only experience it as participants in the
concert experience.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ad in The
New York
Times
Sunday,
November 4,
1973
Hours of searching have produced no evidence
the concert was anticipated, covered in the
press, or reviewed. That weekend in the New
York Times, it made the “Jazz/Rock/Folk/Pop/”
listings and in Sunday’s Arts section, a one-column
inch ad appeared at the very bottom of the page
with the word “TONIGHT” plastered diago-
nally across it in letters so large they obscured
the name of the artist appearing. No reviews
have turned up. But after “Blue J’s” appeared,
sentiment began to build that Cecil had broken
through something significant and lasting,
setting him apart from any faction, category, or
record bin into which he had been filed.
Critic Giddins says that what Cecil accomplished
was “something heroic, a new language largely Enjoy the “extraordinary gift” of “Autumn/
bounded by the tempered scale that evaded its Parade.” And rest in peace, Cecil Taylor.
clichés and formulae.” In his view, “Cecil had
developed his own patterns of sound, melody, Alan Goodman is a writer. He was a DJ and
and rhythm, as well as a distinct touch involv- engineer at WKCR, where he also produced
ing extreme dynamics and extraordinary digital news and cultural programming. He is a for-
precision.” mer journalist and producer who wrote for
newspapers, magazines, radio and televi-
Recently, given an early listen to sion. He wrote two books for Simon & Schus-
“Autumn/Parade,” Giddins described it ter and a comic book for Virgin Comics, and
as an “extraordinary gift,” likely to be has written for Mosaic Records since 1984.
among the most significant discoveries that
will fill out Cecil’s discography as more tapes
of unreleased concerts and sessions come
to light. He singled out “the disarming
beginning” and “the lovely moment as
Jimmy’s saxophone makes its first
appearance and Cecil’s piano cradles it in a
perfectly complementary chord,” as well as
Cecil’s “virtuosic solos no one else could
conceive.” He praised as well Cecil’s “epic
thunderstorm, which dominated the final
half hour of the piece, finishing on a peak of
delighted triumph.”

Another jazz fan who delighted in Cecil’s

work 50 years ago was also given early access
to “Autumn/Parade.” She wasn’t a survivor.
“I can’t anymore,” she told me. A reaction I’d
like to think Cecil would respect, as this is
supposed to be a dialogue, a pact, between
performer and listener.

Or maybe she needs to try again. After seven

listenings, it is still providing me surprises and
encouraging the next listen. There is nothing
about it that says its vintage was half a centu-
ry ago. It is about now because it touches your
life, in a vibrant, visceral, life-affirming sound
experience.
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 The Cecil Taylor Return Concert program
pages 1 & 2
(A transcription is on page 12 of this booklet)

©1973, Cecil Taylor

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 The Cecil Taylor Return Concert program
pages 3 & 4
(A transcription is on page 12 of this booklet)

©1973, Cecil Taylor

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Transcription of the program for Mr. Taylor will be presenting various parts of this project
in a series of special programs to take place at the Spring
Cecil Taylor Unit’s Return Concert
Natural Foods Restaurant, 149 Spring Street, in Soho.
November 4, 1973
The Town Hall, Other projects funded in part by a Guggenheim fellow-
123 West 43rd Street ship, include a solo piano recital, publishing both prose
New York, NY and poetry, a dance recital, and a series of recordings, the
first of which has already been released. This recording,
1. Autumn entitled Indent (Mysteries) is available in limited num-
bers and can be ordered in the lobby.
2. Parade
3. Spring of Two Blue-J’s Also available in limited edition is a poem written to
4. Service complement the musical compositions heard this eve-
_____ ning. It is presented in a unique and aesthetically exciting
manner, the holograph. This term refers to the original
About the Unit: manuscript written and annotated in the artist’s own hand
and reproduced in accordance to Mr. Taylor’s wishes. As
Jimmy Lyons, alto saxophone, has been a member the first of a kind, the aesthetic value of this piece will
of the unit from its inception over a decade ago. During merit greater recognition with the passage of time.
this period, he has worked almost exclusively with Mr. _____
Taylor, participating with him in the Cecil Taylor Unit
program at Antioch College. There will be an intermission at the conclusion of Parade.

To be informed of upcoming Cecil Taylor Unit events,

Andrew Cyrille, percussion, similarly, has been in place your name on the mailing list in the lobby.
close association with Mr. Taylor since the earliest days
_____
of the unit, and also at Antioch College. Together they
comprise what Mr. Taylor refers to as the unit core.
Produced by JAZZ
431-9424
Sirone (Norris Jones), bass, is a new and vital member _____
of the unit, his artistry is best known through association
with violinist Leroy Jenkins (who has made music with Photo by K. Abe
Mr. Taylor) and drummer Jerome Cooper, who together Logo by Jan Armstrong
make up The Revolutionary Ensemble. Graphics by Dragon Studios

This concert marks the return of Cecil Taylor to New

York City, his birthplace, to embark upon projects
conceived during the past three and one-half years while
he held the position of artist and composer in residence at
the University of Wisconsin and Antioch College.

The premiere of the first of these projects will take place

of Avery Fisher (Philharmonic) Hall, January 1, 1974.
By what can only be termed an ambitious undertaking, it
will include the unit core, dance, voice, special effects,
an ensemble of musicians who have participated in the
Cecil Taylor Unit program at the institutions mentioned.
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The following pages are the artifacts from the Spring of Two Blue-Js
original vinyl LP release of “Spring of Two original LP credits:
Blue-J’s” in 1974. Only 2000 copies were ever
pressed. Cecil Taylor Unit
Spring of Two Blue-Js
The album was the second and final record on
Cecil’s own label, Unit Core Records (the first Cecil Taylor: composer, piano
being “Indent,” a solo piano concert Cecil gave Jimmy Lyons: alto saxophone
at Antioch College on March 11, 1973).
Andrew Cyrille: drums
Sirone: bass
As rock’n’roll took over popular imaginations
virtually abandoned jazz and the independents
that had sustained the music for decades either For Ben Webster, died 10/73
sold to larger entities or closed shop.
Second set of Cecil Taylor’s Return Concert
Enough musicians began releasing their own LPs recorded live on
that composers Carla Bley and Michael Mantler November 4, 1973
formed the non-profit New Music Distribution
Service, eventually supporting artist owned The Town Hall
labels ranging from Bley and Mantler (WATT 123 West 43rd Street
Works), Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell New York, New York
(Strata-East) to Philip Glass (Chatham Square)
and Cecil. Produced by Bonitza Melodies
(Fred Seibert) and A.D. Icklas
aka David Laura

Recording by Fred Seibert

with Nick Moy
Remix by Fred Seibert,
Jeff Ader, Alan Goodman,
David Laura and Tony May

Cover photo by K. Abe

Art by Don Mathe and Li Baily

©1974, Cecil Taylor

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 “Spring of Two Blue-J’s” LP cover Photo by K. Abe Art by Don Mathe and Li Baily

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 “Spring of Two Blue-J’s” LP back cover Poem by Cecil Taylor

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 “This is an adjunct
chapter to Mysteries,
a book to be published
about methodological
concepts of black
music.”

–From the paper

insert in the original
LP release on
Unit Core Records

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 –From the paper
insert in the original
LP release on
Unit Core Records

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 –From the paper insert in the original
LP release on Unit Core Records

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 “Spring of Two Blue-J’s”
Vinyl LP labels
Designed by Frank Olinsky

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