''Silent Tongues'' is a live album by

Cecil Taylor Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet. Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex ...

on solo piano recorded at the

Montreux Jazz Festival The Montreux Jazz Festival (formerly Festival de Jazz Montreux and Festival International de Jazz Montreux) is a music festival in Switzerland, held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. It is the second-largest annual ...

in 1974. It features Taylor's five-movement work "Silent Tongues", along with two encores.

Reception

Reviewing in '' Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies'' (1981),

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

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." 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 dat ...

review by

Scott Yanow Scott Yanow (born October 4, 1954) is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author. Allmusic Biography/ref> Biography Yanow was born in New York City and grew up near Los Angeles. Since 1974, he was a regular reviewer of many jazz styles a ...

stated: "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."Yanow, S.
Allmusic Review
Retrieved June 10, 2011. ''Silent Tongues'' was ''

DownBeat ' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...

''s album of the year for 1975.

Track listing

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

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 musica ...

References

{{Authority control 1975 live albums Cecil Taylor live albums Freedom Records live albums Live instrumental albums Solo piano jazz albums