If it's *any* music you LISTEN to, it's free jazz; all the little details and shit. And I fail to see what's wrong with that Cecil-piece; I always thought his playing in that documentary is stellar and I fail to hear how it's not music:the performance is very much in line with his solo-performances where he bases his "improvisations" on little thematic fragments that gets varied in different combinations and permutations sometimes over a long period of time; it's a constructionist approach and the opposite of "chaos". Actually, their constructionist approach is what gives him and Sun Ra even if the latter took a different approach an edge over every other avantgarde artist of the era.

I also suspect it's the very nature of the instrument piano that makes people extra hostile:put a little kid in front of a piano and let it bang and it would of course be dissonant and dischordant chords and even clusterscoming out, thus, it "sounds" like Cecil but where is the structure? The organisation? The repetition and variation of themes? those almost superhumanly fast right-hand runs that hit every note clear and hard? A kid can not do that, actually, experienced musicians can't do that which is why not a single avantgarde pianist who tries to do similar shit even comes close:Cecil is to free-jazz (avantgarde-jazz is more appropriate) piano what Jimi was to the electric guitar and REALLY distinctive as well for a variety of reasons.


Listen to the portion that starts around 3.30:does that sound like someonje who doesn't know how to play? I hear *regular* jazz-chords, melody and everything. He then spazzes out every now and then with atonal and chromatic runs thrown in against the thematic variations and SOME of his playing is mure purely percussive than "melodic" or "harmonic" even if it is overstated. Jimi Hendrix also blended conventional playing with stuff that is more "sound" and even noise.

Either way, listen to those ten minutes again-it's a killer performance.

Cecil is my favorite musician by far but it might be a better idea to start with some of the stuff he did in 1960 or earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thFyDVgMwRY

And if you want to hear him weith a band, the most accessible stuff that's not too early/conventional, i'd say is his three tracks on Gil Evans "Into the hot" (also reissued as part of a record called "Mixed" with Roswell Rudd):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__R7TcRGavE

(BTW, Gil Evans and his orchestra has nothing to do with this; he simply gave Cecil three songs on his record since noone wanted to give Cecil a record-deal at the time).

On both these tracks,the music has a steady rhythm as opposed to a "free" or rubato-one and it gives the music more of a conventional jazz-feel than the stuff he would start doing already the next year.

As for Ornette Coleman and "Shape of jazz", if you think that one is unlistenable, i don't know what to say because that is one of the most accessible free-jazz albums I've heard.