A companion listen to Rosslyn
An album that reignites a passion for the music of the great pianist John Taylor whose melancholic, bespoke romantic touch and road less travelled journeyings cloaked in Evansiana are utterly unforgettable. Imagine hearing his music for the first time if you weren’t born when these pieces were recorded.
It’s a January 2002 archival release recorded live in Birmingham at the CBSO Centre during a Contemporary Music Network tour.
CMN, as the strand of live programming was usually known, was established within the Arts Council of England in the early 1970s to tour a wide range of contemporary music before to all intents and purposes disappearing in the 2000s.
As the promoter Tony Dudley-Evans has commented writing on his personal blog: “Its tours presented the most cutting edge music on the areas of contemporary jazz, contemporary classical and experimental folk and world music, and built up committed audiences for its annual tours.”
The album title takes its name from a Ralph Towner piece and is the penultimate track of 5. The word “Tramonto” comes from the Italian and means “sunset” in English.
That work goes back to the 1990s and a first recording by American guitarist Towner and his compatriot, the Keith Jarrett Standards trio bassist Gary Peacock. It appeared on the Rainbow, Oslo studio recording, Oracle issued in 1994.
Taylor himself recorded this tender, balladic piece on an earlier recording of his own called Rosslyn issued in 2003 by ECM with the great Bass Desires bassist Marc Johnson and the Frisellian drummer Joey Baron (Lookout for Hope, Before We Were Born, Is that You?) who turned 70 earlier this summer.
But it isn’t the first archival Taylor release this year. I was blown away by the issuing of a 2006 JT, Palle Danielsson and Martin France album called Close to Mars that Italian label CamJazz issued typically elegantly in March. One wonders yet again why such incredible work takes so long to appear.
But timing is all if you are in the right place, at the right time to devote time to finding and crucially listening. There is no need at all to be baffled about Taylor’s continued popularity that’s still strong and if anything growing a decade after he died.
An allied potent memorialising of Taylor’s Azimuth bandmate Kenny Wheeler this year also feeds in to the wider picture. Taylor significantly remains very influential on some leading jazz pianists today including fine English players Richard Fairhurst, Nikki Iles, Liam Noble and John Turville plus the German Pablo Held. Listen even harder and you can hear Taylor’s influence on the Wales born Gwilym Simcock, the greatest British jazz pianist of his generation, who this year is back with a vengeance on several albums.
A Tour d’Horizon of A Range of classic work Taylor made
Taylor piece ‘Pure and Simple’ opens affairs. It also had appeared on a very hard-to-find Ronnie Scott’s Jazz House release called Blue Glass in the 1990s that featured JT with erstwhile tube train driver bassist Mick Hutton – known for his work with Ian Shaw – and the Loose Tubes drummer Steve Argüelles. Pianist Liam Noble writing in 2022 referred to that version:
“It’s a close-up sound, and everything is perhaps a bit more spiky than usual because of it. I asked John in a lesson once what he was working on: he played me this tune all the way through and said something like ‘I don’t quite know what to do with it.’ Luckily he kept it just as it was, and I love the way this band enters into the spirit of danger and surrealism. Utterly original music played with wit and energy.”
Liam Noble
The piece is also on a Rainbow, Oslo studio album that has JT with the Belonging band bassist Palle Danielsson and the Weather Report drummer Peter Erskine found on 1993 ECM release You Never Know.
It also figured on a hard to find solo album of Taylor’s called Insight (Sketch, 2003) recorded at the Provençal shrine of a studio La Buissonne.
The Insight link is amplified on Tramonto by a very long rewardingly absorbing version of that album’s ‘Ambleside’ again a piece, like ‘Pure and Simple’, written by the Manchester born Taylor who died in 2015.
Tramonto also has a treatment of ‘Between Moons,’ again a piece of Taylor’s that was included on Rosslyn, a rightfully acclaimed album that is the key companion listen for context and added value.
Iconic bass guitarist and composer Steve Swallow’s ‘Up Too Late,’ which goes back to the 80s, found on French bassist Henri Texier’s Colonel Skopje album is a piece that Taylor with Danielsson and France interpreted on their much loved Angel of the Presence issued 20 years ago.
Finally, Tramonto was recorded on location by Curtis Schwartz. It’s worth being aware of this given the fine engineer’s key role on certain classic jazz releases elsewhere that you might wish to acquaint or reacquaint yourself with. Schwartz also has a great studio in Sussex that has issued memorable work such as The Changing Lights by Stacey Kent and Impossible Gentlemen oeuvre including their classic, Internationally Recognised Aliens. He has great ears.
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