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The
visionary piano virtuoso Cecil Taylor was commissioned by the
Library of Congress to write a work for violin and piano in 1999.
The result was Taylor's "Algonquin"–an intensely joyful
dialogue between violinist Mat Maneri and Taylor. Taylor's
score bridges the gap between jazz and classical music–between
improvisation and notated music. As annotator Bill Shoemaker
writes: "A Taylor score opens a moment of intense creativity,
but only for that moment; afterwards, the score is merely part of
the record, fodder for the files. What endures in Taylor's
music defies notation, conventional or otherwise. It begs the
question: Is a score that is little more than an outline, and
designed only for a single use, as legitimate as one where all
aspects of performance are specified, and has been repeatedly
performed over for years, decades and even centuries? Given
the exhilarating energy conveyed through this recording, the answer
is surely yes."
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