Jazz pianist forged an eclectic style

Cecil Taylor, an avantgarde jazz pianist whose long, sweat-drenched performances aspired to a state of ecstasy and whose uncompromising approach to music elicited both harsh criticism and awestruck adulation, died April 5 at his home in Brooklyn. He was 89.

The death was confirmed by his legal guardian and representative, Adam Wilner. The cause of death was not immediately determined.

For years, Taylor pursued his singular artistic vision, combining jazz influences, modern classical music and African traditions to create a distinctive and defiantly individual style.

He was often linked to some modern-jazz innovators as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, but in many ways Taylor stood alone as the daring personification of free jazz — “the eternal outer curve of the avant-garde,” in the words of critic Gary Giddins.

He was a conservatorytrained pianist who began his career in conventional swing bands, but it wasn’t long before he moved toward an individual style built largely around his own compositions and improvisational verve. Whether working with groups or as a soloist, Taylor was considered a master of pianistic virtuosity and stamina, performing demanding, dissonant solos that sometimes lasted two hours or more.

It was not a style calculated to win popularity. In Ken Burns’ 2000 documentary series “Jazz,” saxophonist Branford Marsalis memorably dismissed Taylor’s music with a barnyard epithet.

But to his admirers — whose numbers grew steadily over time— Taylor was a visionary force who expanded the boundaries of musical expression to include elements of poetry, dance and spiritualism. His recordings won album-ofthe year awards from jazz critics, he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master and, in 1991, he received a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”

“The American aesthetic landscape is littered with idiosyncratic marvels— Walt Whitman, Charles Ives, D.W. Griffith, Duke Ellington, Jackson Pollock —and Taylor belongs with them,” wrote New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett. “Listening to Taylor takes patience and courage. His music asks more than other music, but it gives more than it asks.”

The idea of beauty of was not paramount to Taylor, and he ignored traditional concepts of melody, harmony and rhythm. No one left one of his concerts humming the tunes. He often wore colorful robes and hats and introduced his performances with readings of poetry, sometimes while lying on his back.

Taylor weighed only 140 pounds, but he seemed capable of breaking a piano in two with the ferocity of his attack. He struck the keys with his fists or elbows, producing enormous thunderclaps of sound, and occaionally interrupted his marathon solos with screams, chanting or dancing.

His albums never topped the charts, but such recordings as “Unit Structures” and “Conquistador!” (both 1966), “Cecil Taylor Unit” (1978), “For Olim” (1986) and the 13-disk “Cecil Taylor in Berlin ’88” (1988) have been hailed as idiosyncratic masterpieces.