''Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants)'' is an album by Cecil Taylor recorded in Milan, Italy on October 22–24, 1984 and released on the

Soul Note Black Saint and Soul Note are two affiliated Italian independent record labels. Since their conception in the 1970s, they have released albums from a variety of influential jazz musicians, particularly in the genre of free jazz. History Black S ...

label. The album features performances by Taylor with

Jimmy Lyons Jimmy Lyons (December 1, 1931 – May 19, 1986) was an American alto saxophone player. He is best known for his long tenure in the Cecil Taylor Unit. Lyons was the only constant member of the band from the mid-1960s until his death. Taylor never ...

Enrico Rava Enrico Rava (born 20 August 1939), is an Italian jazz trumpeter. He started on trombone, then changed to the trumpet after hearing Miles Davis. Career He was born in Trieste, Italy. His first commercial work was as a member of Gato Barbieri' ...

Tomasz Stanko Tomasz is a Polish given name, the equivalent of Thomas in English. Notable people with the given name include: *Tomasz Adamek (born 1976), Polish heavyweight boxer *Tomasz Arciszewski (1877–1955), Polish socialist politician and Prime Min ...

, Frank Wright,

John Tchicai John Martin Tchicai ( ; 28 April 1936 – 8 October 2012) was a Danish free jazz saxophonist and composer. Biography Tchicai was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to a Danish mother and a Congolese father. The family moved to Aarhus, where he st ...

Gunter Hampel Gunter Hampel (born 31 August 1937) is a German jazz vibraphonist, clarinettist, saxophonist, flautist, pianist, and composer. He became dedicated to free jazz in the 1960s, developing a record label (Birth Records) and working with Jeanne Lee, ...

, Karen Borca, Andre Martinez, William Parker and Rashid Bakr who are billed as The Orchestra of Two Continents.

Reception

The

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

review by Scott Yanow states "On the four Taylor originals, the colorful ensembles are quite dense although there is room for individual solos and heroics. Not too surprisingly Cecil Taylor is very much in control of the music". The authors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings called the album "an important and insufficiently recognized record", and commented: "mainly these are exploding, brilliantly coloured ensemble improvisations where the horns... make superbly euphoric collective statements. Densely characterized though Taylor's music is, these musicians make their way into it with the highest courage, and the results are extraordinarily compelling."

Gary Giddins Gary Giddins is an American jazz critic and author. He wrote for ''The Village Voice'' from 1973; his "Weather Bird" column ended in 2003. In 1986 Gary Giddins and John Lewis created the American Jazz Orchestra which presented concerts using a ...

described the album as "a singularly merry caper", and wrote: "Ever since the 1961 'Bulbs' (''Into the Hot''), Taylor has shown a tantalizing talent for voicing saxophones; all he's ever needed is two to get a firm, woodsy, consistent sonority that sounds like nothing else in or out of jazz. This despite constancy in one chair (Lyons) and constant change in the other: Archie Shepp on ''Into the Hot'', Ken Mclntyre on ''Unit Structures'', Sam Rivers on ''The Great Concert''..., and David S. Ware on ''Dark to Themselves''... For ''Winged Serpent'', Lyons was one of five reed players... and the variants produced by that choir moor the work. To say that Taylor is in his element, threading his way through the reeds, two brasses, two drummers, and bass, romping polyrhythmically in and around every collective outburst and sigh, is to say nothing of the measured care with which he organized his unit structures."

Track listing

:''All compositions by Cecil Taylor.'' # "Taht" – 8:50 # "Womb Waters Scent of the Burning Armadillo Shell" – 13:04 # "Cun-Un-Un-An" – 7:10 # "Winged Serpent" – 13:54 :*Recorded in Milan, Italy on October 22–24, 1984

Personnel

* Cecil Taylor:

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

: alto saxophone, vocals *

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

, vocals *

: trumpet, vocals * Frank Wright:

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

, vocals *

: tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, vocals *

: baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, vocals * Karen Borca: bassoon, vocals * William Parker: bass, vocals * Rashid Bakr: drums, vocals *Andre Martinez: drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...

, vocals

References

{{Authority control 1985 albums Cecil Taylor albums Black Saint/Soul Note albums