Silent Tongues

Silent Tongues is a live album by Cecil Taylor on solo piano recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974. It features Taylor's five-movement work "Silent Tongues" along with two encores.

Silent Tongues
Live album by
Cecil Taylor
Released1974
Recorded1974
VenueMontreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland
GenreFree jazz
Length52:03
LabelFreedom
Cecil Taylor chronology
Spring of Two Blue J's
(1973)		 Silent Tongues
(1974)		 Dark to Themselves
(1976)

Reception
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]
Christgau's Record GuideB[2]
The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide[3]

Reviewing in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau wrote: "Since I recommend Taylor's appearances so extravagantly, it's only fair to note that there is a natural theater to his live performance that I miss on record—observing his concentration greatly increases my own. Especially solo, he's too abstract for a rock and roller to follow."[2]

The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow awarded the album five stars stating: "To simplify in explaining what he was doing at this point of time, it can be said that Taylor essentially plays the piano like a drum set, creating percussive and thunderous sounds that are otherworldly and full of an impressive amount of energy and atonal ideas. Many listeners will find these performances to be quite difficult but it is worth the struggle to open up one's perceptions as to what music can be".[1]

It was DownBeat's album of the year for 1975.[4]

Track listing
All compositions by Cecil Taylor
  1. "Abyss (First Movement)"/"Petals and Filaments (Second Movement)"/"Jitney (Third Movement)" - 18:23
  2. "Crossing Part 1 (Fourth Movement Part 1)" - 8:36
  3. "Crossing Part 2 (Fourth Movement Part 2)" - 10:00
  4. "After All (Fifth Movement)" - 9:59
  5. "Jitney No. 2" - 4:11
  6. "After All No. 2" - 2:50
  • Recorded at Montreux on July 2, 1974

Personnel

References
  1. Yanow, S. Allmusic Review accessed June 10, 2011
  2. Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: T". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved March 15, 2019 – via robertchristgau.com.
  3. Swenson, J., ed. (1985). The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide. USA: Random House/Rolling Stone. pp. 189. ISBN 0-394-72643-X.
  4. "1975 DownBeat Critics Poll". DownBeat. Maher Publications. Archived from the original on January 2, 2013.
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