50 great moments in jazz: Cecil Taylor's jazz piano revolution

This 1956 interpretation of Thelonious Monk's typically flinty Bemsha Swing might not sound revolutionary at first. But listen closer ...The drummer swings, and the theme sounds like Monk's rhythmically quirky conception of bebop. The opening of the improvisation seems to announce a set of regular jazz variations on an underlying harmony. But as it proceeds, the presence of a different kind of musical mind and spirit at work becomes startlingly, even disconcertingly, clear. Those sharply stabbed...

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