In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor

by Philip Freeman

“Cecil Taylor’s life was a string of mysteries that made a beautiful necklace of precious sounds, dances, and poetry he called music. Philip Freeman’s book In the Brewing Luminous gives us a wonderful glimpse of Cecil’s life and music. Hopefully this book will inspire us all in ways we can’t imagine.” (William Parker)

For 60 years, Cecil Taylor’s music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz. His volcanic piano improvisations, delivered with astonishing technical command and unrelenting power at marathon length, were regarded as the ultimate in free jazz. But Taylor was much more than that: He was one of jazz’s (and America’s) great composers and arrangers, developing a unique and instantly recognizable compositional voice and a radical method of transmitting his ideas that in effect taught the members of his ensembles to speak an entirely new musical language.

In the Brewing Luminous is the first full-length biography of Cecil Taylor. In the Brewing Luminous takes the reader from his birth in 1929 to his death in 2018 and beyond. It provides detailed analysis of his extensive body of work, which encompassed solo performance and ensembles of every size from duos to big bands, and included work meant to accompany dancers and theatrical performances. It also explores his poetry and the broader milieu of which he was a part. Taylor was not an island; he was a fixture on the New York cultural scene and welcomed with open arms in Germany, Italy, Japan and elsewhere. And he did not work in isolation — his bands were crucial collaborators, and his music was impossible to imagine without the contributions of players like alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille, all of whom and many more are discussed here as well.

Philip Freeman is a veteran music journalist and the author of New York Is Now!: The New Wave Of Free Jazz, Running The Voodoo Down: The Electric Music Of Miles Davis, and Ugly Beauty: Jazz In The 21st Century. He lives in Montana.

With a contribution by Markus Müller

Genres: Music

344 pages, Paperback

Published July 5, 2024

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Reviews

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kudos to Phil Freeman for a bio that succeeds on several levels. It's an encyclopedic primer to a giant discography, an invitation to hear that music with new ears, a window onto multiple jazz scenes from the '50s on, and a revealing portrait - probably as intimate as possible - of a guy who's always seemed otherworldly.

Taylor's music makes me happier than almost anyone's, so this is destined to be a heavily dogeared and annotated reference on my shelf. (Which I feel a little bad about because it's also a beautifully made physical object!)

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freeman does a number of remarkable things with this book; gives you a new appreciation of Taylor's music, an appreciation of Taylor as an artist (not just a remarkable musician), and places Taylor in the music world across his career.

TBH it is heavier on the 'Music' side rather than the 'Life' side of Taylor, but that's a quibble. If you want to try to understand why Taylor's music is worth getting to know, even if it is challenging, you can't do much better than this book.

[David Strassman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent adjunct to listening to Cecil Taylor's music. A wonderful read and tale of a life!