1996
TMM / "Podewil"
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The 29th "Total Music Meeting" will present Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor, each having two and a half days, as soloists and together with their ensembles/projects. Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor: I know many people, who still get goose pimples on the mention of these two names, they become dizzy with anticipation and journey to the concert with sweaty hands and an euphoric rush of adrenaline. Two weeks ago, I spoke to an American artist, Elizabeth Peyton, who is painting, for exampIe, Liam Gallagher of the pop band "Oasis". It was the first time, that somebody told me personally, and totally without any inhibitions, of her love of a pop-phenomenon, her love! In this instant it became cIear to me, that my relationship to Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor begins at two opposite poles of my emotional spectrum, but in fact amounts to an absolutely irrational and wonderful love. Maybe you are slightly confused by now, because you think that a "Total Music Meeting" is the purgatory of true hardcore existentialists who would alIow themselves everything other than emotions. Go to Berlin from 30th October to 3rd November. You will meet more delightfully mad peopIe and friendly music-Iovers than you can imagine. And above all you will experience two musicians and their music, and this music will sooner or later change everything you've thought about music and life till now. Just try to believe it. Whatever one may imagine a "Total Music Meeting" to be, Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor are representatives of a musical history, which goes far beyond the history of the "Total Music Meeting" and the "Free Music Production", the organisers of the Meeting. Michael Rieth of the "Frankfurter Rundschau" has described the "Total Music Meeting" as the most important event Berlin has had to offer in the fieId of culture over the past 25 years. It is definiteIy an event, which still polarises the audience and music-Iovers. Yet at the same time, the love and contempt for the kind of music, for which the "TMM" stands, are equally irrational. The fact is, that the 29th edition of the "TMM" presents two musicians who represent musical history. Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor have worked through the history of improvised Music after 1945. By so doing they have become models of an attitude to playing, whose international recognition and music-historical ranking only became possibIe through European musicians and co-operatives, and here, above all, "Free Music Production". And it was Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor, who have made it cIear through their expIoits that this attitude of playing may have its particular continental way of playing, but is, at the same time beyond boundaries. Lacy was declared the most European of all American post-bop players relatively early. This may aIso have to do with the fact, that the beauty of his music has often been compared with the consistency of Bach's music, and may aIso be due to the fact that he went to Paris early, in search of ways of surviving. Lacy has been playing with the first generation of European Improvisers, the "Globe Unity Orchestra" (for example "Rumbling", FMP CD 40, 1975) when Cecil Taylor was, through pure energy, still playing himseIf into an imaginary far-off Mount Olympus. The perception of both musicians could not have been more different. White Taylor encouraged all categories of a mystifying "fan-dom", Lacy has rather been the object of silent admiration. Today one can see what part "FMP" has played in the careers of both musicians. In Cecil Taylor's case, there is what can be described as the only example of total pop-passion in Improvised Music that I am aware of. With the legendary 1988 festival, that "FMP" organised for Taylor, Cecil Taylor became a world-wide celebrated superstar. It is also important to note, that his music changed at the same time, and that during and after this festival he sounded like he'd never sounded before. Lacy has been something of a silent and obvious driving force within the history of European Improvisation, which has been developing at an astonishing rate since the seventies. And it has surely always played an important role, that he, an American and true "Monkist" transformed direct relationships into indirect relationships. I wish that this was the place to describe what it is like to be a superstar playing in front of 500 peopIe and what it is like for 500 peopIe to listen to Steve Lacy and Cecil Taylor. If you go there and listen to them, you will experience the essence of what I would like to be abIe to put into words: the fascination of listening to music is greater than the moment, music which changes your life, again and again. Translation: Isabel Seeberg & Paul Lytton from: Folder TMM 1996 |
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