1986 · Album
Iwontunwonsi: Live at Sweet Basil
Recorded February 8, 1986, Sweet Basil Jazz Club, New York City · Sound Hills · Format: Solo piano
Invention and Exploration in Solo Flight
Taylor's concerts are a remarkable union of man and instrument, the focus unrelenting, Cecil surprising himself.
By 1986, Cecil Taylor had spent three decades pushing the piano into territory most musicians wouldn't follow. Iwontunwonsi captures him in his sixties, still restless, still discovering. This is a late-career performance from an artist who had already made his landmark statements, yet here he sounds neither reflective nor diminished — if anything, more committed to the moment, more willing to let the music unfold without apology.
Recorded at Sweet Basil in New York, the album is structured in three extended sections, Taylor alone at the keyboard with no safety net. What emerges is controlled chaos: his fingers move in clusters and runs, the overall arc both logical and surprising. An AllMusic reviewer noted the kinship with his 1974 solo work Silent Tongues, but argued that here the structure feels even more coherent, more willing to build large-scale forms while maintaining the velocity and invention that define his style. The encore — a brief, self-aware coda — suggests a performer comfortable enough to joke about his own intensity.
Iwontunwonsi matters because it proves Taylor at this stage wasn't resting on documented achievements. Solo performances demand total presence; there's no ensemble to hide behind, no rhythm section to share the weight. What the audience heard was a pianist still interrogating the instrument, still finding new angles. For anyone curious about Taylor's later work or his approach to free improvisation, this is a genuine glimpse of the man and his method.
Who's playing
Cecil Taylorpiano
Where next?
More by Cecil Taylor
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