Derek Bailey was an English avant-garde guitarist and an important figure in the free improvisation movement. Bailey abandoned conventional performance techniques found in jazz, exploring atonality, noise, and whatever unusual sounds he could produce with the guitar. Much of his work was released on his own label Incus Records. In addition to solo work, Bailey collaborated frequently with other musicians and recorded with collectives such as Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Company.
Cecil Percival Taylor was an American pianist and poet.
Evan Shaw Parker is a British tenor and soprano saxophone player who plays free improvisation.
Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler, OC was a Canadian composer and trumpet and flugelhorn player, based in the U.K. from the 1950s onwards.
Tony Oxley is an English free improvising drummer and one of the founders of Incus Records.
Barry John Guy is an English composer and double bass player. His range of interests encompasses early music, contemporary composition, jazz and improvisation, and he has worked with a wide variety of orchestras in the UK and Europe. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music under Buxton Orr, and later taught there.
Jazz Advance is the debut album by pianist Cecil Taylor, recorded for the Transition label in September 1956. The album features performances by Taylor with Buell Neidlinger, Denis Charles and Steve Lacy.
Mixed is a compilation album of two avant-garde jazz sessions featuring performances by the Cecil Taylor Unit and the Roswell Rudd Sextet. The album was released on the Impulse! label in 1998 and collects three performances by Taylor with Archie Shepp, Jimmy Lyons, Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray with Ted Curson and Roswell Rudd added on one track which were originally released under Gil Evans' name on Into the Hot (1961). The remaining tracks feature Rudd with Giuseppi Logan, Lewis Worrell, Charlie Haden, Beaver Harris and Robin Kenyatta and were originally released as Everywhere (1966). Essentially these are the three Cecil Taylor tracks from the "Gil Evans album" teamed with Roswell Rudd's Impulse album Everywhere, in its entirety.
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 label. The album features performances by Taylor with Jimmy Lyons, Enrico Rava, Tomasz Stanko, Frank Wright, John Tchicai, Gunter Hampel, Karen Borca, Andre Martinez, William Parker and Rashid Bakr who are billed as The Orchestra of Two Continents.
Live in Bologna is a live album by Cecil Taylor recorded in Bologna on November 3, 1987 and released on the Leo label. The album features a concert performance by Taylor with Thurman Barker, William Parker, Carlos Ward and Leroy Jenkins.
Nailed is a live album by Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Tony Oxley recorded on September 26, 1990 at the Bechstein Concert Hall in Berlin and released on the FMP label.
Chinampas is a spoken word album by avant-garde jazz pianist Cecil Taylor on which he reads his poetry accompanied by the sound of bells, tympani, and small percussion. Taylor performed all of the vocal and instrumental parts, which are overdubbed. A note on the album jacket states: "Chinampa – an Aztec word meaning 'floating garden'."
Looking Corona is a live album featuring performances by Cecil Taylor with Harald Kimmig, Muneer Abdul Fataah, William Parker and Tony Oxley recorded in Berlin on November 3 & 4, 1989 and released on the FMP label.
Looking The Feel Trio is a live album featuring performances by Cecil Taylor with William Parker and Tony Oxley recorded in Berlin on November 2, 1989, and released on the FMP label.
Celebrated Blazons is a live album featuring performances by Cecil Taylor with William Parker and Tony Oxley recorded at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin on June 29, 1990, and released on the FMP label.
Melancholy is a live album by Cecil Taylor's Workshop Ensemble featuring Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Tony Oxley recorded on September 30, 1990, at the Bechstein Concert Hall in Berlin and released on the FMP label.
Taylor/Dixon/Oxley is a live album by pianist Cecil Taylor, trumpeter Bill Dixon, and drummer Tony Oxley. It was recorded on May 19, 2002 during the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville in Victoriaville, Quebec, and was released in 2002 by Les Disques Victo.
Almeda is a live album by Cecil Taylor recorded during the "Total Music Meeting" at the "Podewil", the headquarters of the Kulturprojekte Berlin non-profit organisation, on November 2, 1996, and released in 2004 on the FMP label. The album features Taylor with eight other musicians, and is a recording of a single performance lasting over an hour. The same group recorded the album The Light of Corona the following day. In 2012, FMP also released Almeda , with the same musicians, as part of their Archive Edition.
Live in the World is a live album by the David S. Ware Quartets. Six tracks were recorded in Switzerland in 1998, and feature Ware on saxophone, Matthew Shipp on piano, William Parker on bass, and Susie Ibarra on drums. The remaining tracks were recorded in two locations during 2003: Terni, Italy, with Ware, Shipp, Parker and drummer Hamid Drake; and Milano, Italy, with Drake replaced by Guillermo E. Brown. The album was released as a triple CD set by Thirsty Ear Recordings in 2005.
Naan Tso is an album by the free improvisation ensemble known as Foxes Fox, featuring saxophonist Evan Parker, pianist Steve Beresford, double bassist John Edwards, and drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo. It was recorded on October 27, 2004, at Gateway Studios in London, and was released in 2005 by Psi Records. The album was recorded five years after the group's debut album, and roughly a year prior to the departure of Moholo-Moholo, who moved back to his native South Africa in September 2005 after years of exile in England.
