Last Thursday night at the Whitney in New York City, 87-year-old Cecil Taylor, in an exuberant, multicolor jacket and a little brown knit cap, sat down at the piano and played some out-of-this-world music. Taylor is being celebrated by the museum with a 10-day retrospective. Though he is fairly frail, walking with the help of a cane and on the arm of various friends and family members, he is often fiery at the piano, stabbing at keys as though chasing them in a foxhunt. Other times, he cascades through the upper register, tiptoeing through a rainbow. He’s an improviser and the music, an hour-long piece—accompanied by Tony Oxley (who was barely present, performing via two CD players) and the strange and captivating dancer Min Tanaka—reflects that. It’s like taking a meandering spring walk in a new city with a loved one: it’s beautiful but you have no idea where you are going.
Is what Cecil Taylor is doing new? As music critics, editors, and writers, we are always in search of the new, championing what we’ve never heard before. Jazz is most certainly not a new genre, and Taylor’s wild approach is similar to the one he’s had for almost his whole life. Yet the feeling at his performance was alive. That dynamism is unique to jazz and jazz-adjacent music, and we felt it was time to dedicate an entire issue of our quarterly publication The Pitchfork Review to the genre.
We approached this issue as fans, in a time when we feel like we're seeing and hearing jazz everywhere. This week, we’ll be running a number of stories from the issue, like Hilton Als’ interview with Sonny Rollins, Rebecca Bengal’s meditation on Sun Ra’s wardrobe, Carvell Wallace’s investigation of Thelonious Monk’s trolling, and much more. Order a copy of the issue here, and check back every day for more stories. And if you’re in New York City this week, swing by the Whitney to check in with Cecil Taylor. It'll feel good.