Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday January 25th, 2017 with Bernard Stepien
Cecil Taylor and the Italian Instabile Orchestra

Around the year 2000, pianist Cecil Taylor started to get in the masterclass branch in order to transmit his knowledge and experience to new generations. At first, many could think that Cecil Taylor’s music is total chaos of some kind. Thanks to this initiative, many, including myself (three weeks at 4 three hours sessions a week = 36 hours of watching Taylor’s hands on the piano) discovered, that Cecil Taylor’s music is instead well organized, written down and especially follows some very precise harmonic or rhythmic concepts. The Italian Instabile Orchestra got involved with Cecil Taylor in 2000 and the result is pretty similar to what I experienced personally in NYC. In this recording you will discover how Taylor’s music is well structured and based on pre-composed small themes that are developed throughout the performance by trying out every combination of the notes of that theme or sequences of themes, then some soloists get out of control, inevitably... The 18 musicians Instabile Orchestra was founded in 1988 by Pino Minafra and is still going on. For those curious about Taylor’s musical concept, see the following believe it or not only a master thesis, I am wondering what the PhD thesis will look like: http://www.kajadraksler.com/Taylor.pdf