This recording is an homage to the great American pianist, composer, and poet Cecil Taylor. I first encountered Mr. Taylor's music over 20 years ago when I was an undergraduate student. His early quartet recordings shocked me out of my naïve understanding of jazz. As I dug deeper into his music I learned more about his background as a classically trained pianist, and his ever-evolving, complex and nuanced thinking about the roles of composition, improvisation, and all the attendant issues related to form, expression and much more.

Some years later I discovered his solo piano recordings, and again these were a revelation. Here was a phenomenal mind and spirit at work, exploring sonic landscapes, textures, harmonic realms, and a level of physicality unprecedented on the instrument. What I found particularly fascinating was how his music reflected not only his deep immersion in the jazz language, but also his interest in contemporary classical music and the avant-garde. Mr. Taylor's compositions and improvisations again upended my understanding of what the piano could be, and expanded my understanding of improvisation and composition.

Around this time I was beginning to develop my own language as a composer and improviser, with a focus on marimba. For some reason still unknown to me, over the last hundred years the marimba has been almost entirely co-opted by the Western classical tradition, and the role of improvisation has been virtually absent in the recorded oeuvre of the instrument, and in live performances. Even today, with the exception of myself, Pedro Carneiro, and a handful of others, no one is exploring the instrument in a way that includes a serious study of the art of improvisation. A few artists use the instrument as a step-child to the vibraphone in more mainstream jazz, but the art of "free" or "open" improvisation has until now been neglected on this instrument. So I had no guides, and turned instead to the great solo pianists. Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett have been the prime influences, among many others.

As my work as an improviser and composer has matured and I have embarked on creating a large body of recorded repertoire, I have continued to return to Mr. Taylor's solo piano recordings for inspiration and courage. I've spent hundreds of hours listening to his solo music with a good set of headphones, in complete concentration and rapture. (I often do this in my reptile room, while handling a python or a boa constrictor, an activity I find deeply meditative and calming, hence the title of the first track . . . )

A knowledgeable listener will hear traces of his work on this recording. Harmonic approaches, a percussive approach to the instrument (I often think of the marimba as a bunch of wooden drums rather than a keyboard instrument), an intense physicality, and an ecumenical stylistic approach are all present. But I have resisted the urge to blatantly copy his music. I can think of nothing more disrespectful to him than to do so. I only saw him in concert once, and never had the chance to meet him, so I have no idea what his personality was like, but given the generosity and depth of his musical expression, and the piercing articulation of his writings, my best guess is that he would be more honored if I tried to blaze my own path inspired by him, rather than just copying him.

One of my favorite recordings of his is the solo recording "Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly! Fly!" from 1980. At that point he had been composing, improvising, and concertizing, and recording for over 25 years and the depth of his musicianship is deeply evident. I also found his program notes to be fascinating, and I will end my own here by including a quote of his:

"The whole question of 'freedom' has been misunderstood, by those on the outside and even by some of the musicians in 'the movement.' If a man plays for a certain amount of time - scales, licks, what have you - eventually a kind of order asserts itself. Whether he chooses to notate that personal order or engage in polemics about it, it's there. That is, if he's saying anything in his music. There is no music without order - if that music comes from a man's innards. But that order is not necessarily related to any single criterion of what order should be as imposed from the outside. This is not a question, then, of 'freedom' as opposed to 'nonfreedom', but rather it is a question of recognizing ideas and expressions of order." -Cecil Taylor

Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Everything I'm doing and so many others is so much easier because you blazed a path for us. Rest in peace, you will never be forgotten.

-Payton MacDonald