From 2016 to 2018, I attempted to make my trio with Mat and Craig my “road” band, and somehow succeeded, for a spell. Bill Frisell came to hear us play in late 2018, and then wrote me, asking about the music. Craig, Mat and I have admired Bill since each of us began in this music, so I invited him to play a gig with us. Though it took more than a year to book the date, as we played the show, Bill felt like a natural part of the band.

Craig Taborn’s Avenging Angel album was widely praised for the fresh ideas it brought to the solo piano idiom. “It reflects Mr Taborn’s galactically-broad interests,” said the New York Times, “along with his multifaceted technique,” while the Guardian saluted Craig’s “genius (there is no other word for it)" and his “world of whispered, wide-spaced figures, ringing overtones, evaporating echoes and glowering contrapuntal cascades”. Over the last decade Taborn has continued to refine and develop his approach, reaching new high ground with Shadow Plays, a stunning live recital from Vienna’s Konzerthaus. In this fully improvised concert, recorded in March 2020, Craig explores sounds and silences, swirling colours, densities and forms, creating new music in the moment with both poetic imagination and an iron grip on his spontaneously generated material.

Cecil Taylor was a powerful and unforgettable music force—a fearless visionary and one of the greatest musicians of the past century. His visceral and intense performances influenced generations of musicians, artists, poets, filmmakers and creative minds of every description. This CD features six heartfelt tributes performed by the group Winged Serpents, which consists of six of the most original pianists and musical thinkers working today. Each touched by Cecil’s magic in different ways, they perform improvised tributes to this legendary genius who created a new music that transcended all genres.

Reid Anderson, Dave King, Craig Taborn: the start of this intimate fellowship, also a narrative showing the invaluable role of friendship in music, is dated 1982. At the forefront are songs based on a pop sensibility, played live without sequencers and delivered by astound ing improvisers and virtuoso instrumentalists, eschewing the muscular gestures of soloist free-styling and improvisatory furore and thus making wisdom audible: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.