American - Musician | March 15, 1930 -
When you play, when you perform, it might be for the last time, so you got to do it.
Cecil Taylor
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They say, 'We will give you money, but we want you to play this or that.' And I always thought, 'If I'm going to do that, I might as well go back and be a dishwasher.'
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I've always tried to be a poet more than anything else. I mean, professional musicians die.
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I'm saying that people who are enmeshed in situations of subjugation and have to live, have to find ways to project their dignity as human beings - in spite of all the efforts of those around them to degrade them - I'm saying that this music is the manifestation of the dignity in the life that has always been present.
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You know what the material is so that you never play it the same way twice.
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Find one note on the instrument that pleases you, and then find another note that also pleases you.
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Lena Horne - when she walked onstage, she really was Erzulie.
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Before he fought Billy Conn, Joe Louis said, 'He can run, but he can't hide.' That's how I feel about New York: You can run from it, but you can't hide.
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The emphasis in each piece is on building a whole, totally integrated structure. In doing this, we try to carry on - in ensemble as well as solo sections - the mood of a jazz soloist. I mean that principle of kinetic improvisation that keeps a jazz solo building.
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Someone once asked me if I was gay. I said, 'Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?' I avoid the trap of easy definition.
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I am not afraid of European influences. The point is to use them, as Ellington did, as part of my life as an American Negro.
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When you think about musicians who are reading music, my contention has always been the energy that you're using deciphering what the symbol is is taking away from the maximum creative energy that you might have had if you understood that it's but a symbol.
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