Cecil Taylor On Piano Jazz

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Cecil Taylor performs at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 2002. Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images hide caption

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Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

Cecil Taylor performs at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 2002.

Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

Cecil Taylor encompasses a never-ending range of sound and emotion. On his way to the Piano Jazz studio in 1994, the avant-garde jazz pianist and his cab driver discovered that they went to the same high school, opening up a whirlwind of small worlds, and inspiring the improvised piece that opens this episode.

"You know what the material is, so that you never play it the same way twice," Taylor tells Marian McPartland in a beautiful conversation about poetry (she accompanies a reading of "Iridescence") and creation as an act of self-love: "Find one note on the instrument that pleases you and then find another note that also pleases you."

Originally broadcast Feb. 26, 1994.

Set List

• "Conversations with Marian & The Driver" (Taylor, McPartland)
• "Glass Under Water" (Taylor)
• "Iridescence" (Taylor, McPartland)
• "Free Piece" (Taylor, McPartland)
• "Five Notes" (Taylor)
• "Introduction" (Taylor)
• "There's Always More" (Taylor, McPartland)