In the 1980s, Mr. Taylor was unwillingly outed as gay by critic Stanley Crouch.
“Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?”
Mr. Taylor later said.
He had no immediate survivors.
In 2013, he received the Kyoto Prize, a $500,000 award from Japan for cultural achievement. He continued to perform as recently as 2016.
When asked to explain the nature of his thorny music, Mr. Taylor often turned silent, saying only that the music spoke for itself.
“I’m in a state of trance when I play,”
he told the New Yorker. “Playing is not a question of energy. It’s spiritual transfiguration. If playing were merely physicality, I’d be a basketball player or a miler.”
source: Matt Schudel for Washington Post
Cecil Taylor, pianist, 1929-2018
In Memory: “Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?”
Art of Quotation 