2001 · Album
Complicité
Recorded May 22, 2000, Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, Victoriaville, Quebec · Les Disques Victo · Produced by Not specified
Three Pianists, One Afternoon, Pure Improvisation
Three different pianists, three different visions of freedom—all captured live in a single day.
Complicité documents three separate improvisation sessions from a single afternoon at the Victoriaville festival, each pairing Cecil Taylor with a different collaborator. What makes this album distinctive is how it refuses to center Taylor despite his name. Each disc belongs equally to its co-conspirator.
The Plimley/Oswald pairing opens the set, and Paul Plimley's restrained touch contrasts sharply with what follows. AllMusic reviewer François Couture noted that "Free" works best when the two players abandon pure energy display and let the improvisation breathe—a moment of actual conversation rather than parallel monologues. Marilyn Crispell's disc is stranger still: melodious and delicate where Taylor typically hammers, it sounds less like a confrontation and more like two musicians discovering unexpected common ground. Couture heard echoes of her 2001 album Amarylis (2001) in its tonal clarity. Taylor's final session on disc three returns to jagged intensity, though even here Couture found something worth hearing in the pockets of subtlety between the runs.
This is strictly for listeners genuinely interested in free improvisation with no safety net. If you want Taylor at his most characteristic—fierce, relentless, unmissable—start with Unit Structures (1966) instead. Complicité asks something different: whether improvisation between strong-willed players can ever be about compromise rather than conquest.
Who's playing
Paul Plimleypiano
Marilyn Crispellpiano
John Oswaldalto saxophone
Where next?
More by Cecil Taylor
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