Cecil Taylor, piano
Harri Sjöström, soprano sax
Tristan Honsinger, cello
Teppo Hauta-Aho, double bass
Paul Lovens, drumset, cymbals and gongs

Recorded October 30.1998 at Tampere Jazz Happening by the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE at Tampere Jazz Happening. Originally produced for YLE by Veli- Pekka Heinonen

Final mix by Patrick Römer and Harri Sjöström + Paul Lovens
Mastering by Patrick Römer of Unisono Records

First time ever on CD, never before published Cecil Taylor Quintet feat. Harri Sjostrom - sax, Tristan Honsinger - cello, Teppo Hauta-aho - bass, and Paul Lovens - drums. The legendary band recorded live at Tampere Jazz Happening 1998

By the time of his first substantive engagement with European improvisors, Cecil Taylor was 59. He had consolidated his approach into the most radical piano concept of the twentieth century, music so personal that it was sometimes hermetic, so disciplined it felt like a principle, so wild it proposed quantum potential. When he worked in a group – or as he preferred to call it, a unit – he was an uncompromising collaborator; anyone playing with him had to put up or shut up or just get left in the wake. Work with CT was not taken lightly.
In 1988, FMP’s Jost Gebers organized a month-long Berlin residency for Taylor, a summit with leading figures of improvisation in Europe, among them Paul Lovens and Tristan Honsinger. Two years later, during informal morning rehearsals with subsets of a large workshop band, saxophonist Harri Sjöström imagined a smaller unit. “Warming up in the mornings it was very free, no one was under any pressure and there was no leader. I thought perhaps it could be possible to put together a group with Cecil Taylor and have this freedom, just like in a European free improvising group.” Sjöström mustered the courage to propose this to Cecil, who was immediately receptive. After several versions, one lineup congealed into a working band: Taylor, Sjöström, Lovens, Honsinger, and Finnish bassist and composer Teppo Hauta-aho. Sjöström, Hauta-aho, and Lovens worked together in Quintet Moderne, and all had played extensively with Honsinger. “I remember very well Cecil saying that this is the best band he ever had,” says Sjöström. “Then he said: No this is our band.”
I was fortunate to catch this group in October 1997 in Stockholm. The crux o.......
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