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By Mary Williams

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Cecil Taylor is quite a character. Starting his set on an offstage microphone, Taylor chose to introduce his music with a reading that included math equations and facts about electrons, read in different voices and interrupted by goblin-esque noises. After a few minutes of that, Taylor shuffled into view in an oversized white shirt and black pants tucked into multi-colored socks, with no shoes.

His music, which closed the first night of All Tomorrow’s Parties in Royce Hall on Thursday, was just as unconventional. When Taylor began to play the piano, an assault of notes came flying out, not leading to any melody or structured composition, but rather to more flurries of notes. To distinguish between a dramatic pause and the end of a song, Taylor hopped up after his first piece, and began to read more science and math facts. His voice sometimes low and often high and distorted, he paced around the stage, not even close to the microphone, and not really projecting. He banged on the top of the piano and stomped his feet for emphasis, before taking a seat and starting to play again. His talent as a piano player was clear, and he certainly had loyal fans in the audience, who called him back for two encores. However it is difficult to stay into an hourlong solo performance, especially when not a single melody or consistent rhythm could be found.

The fact that Royce Hall was less than half full reinforces that this music, while appreciated by those who were there, wasn’t for everyone. Taylor’s set followed an evening of spoken word performances. Nathaniel Mackey read several poems about or inspired by music, which was fitting for the first performance of the four-day-long music festival. His poems were interesting, but Yoda he spoke like, and the crowd’s response was lukewarm.

Another lackluster reading was given by Gerard Malanga, whose style and poems were too sedate to for the concert hall setting, although in a more intimate space they probably would have been better appreciated. Ira Cohen, on the other hand, gave a lively reading that created an early high point. In fact, his delivery style wasn’t the only lively thing about him. Wearing a red shirt and a shiny gold scarf under a long flowing coat, with long hair and a full beard, he was one staff short of looking like a wizard. His poems contained vivid images and several humorous points, and the audience responded well.

Lydia Lunch gave the most popular of the readings. Her style was angry, critical, and funny at the same time. Her material can be most easily described by what she was against. She was anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-society, anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-media, and especially anti-male, although she clarified that since she only hates men in power, she didn’t hate any of the men in the audience. Her set was a success, and she was the only one of the poets to elicit applause and cheers mid-poem. Tying together the poetry and jazz sides of the concert was

John Sinclair, who read his work over a two-person horn section. The horn players operated independently of one another, with Sinclair’s words acting as a through line that made a little more sense of it all. The set was attention-grabbing and always entertaining, and a good transition into Taylor’s performance. The one misfit of the concert was singer-songwriter Smog, who appeared between the readings and Sinclair’s set. “I guess I’m the only poet who remembered the bring my guitar,” he said when he came onstage. While his quiet, sparse songs didn’t fit in, they were an enjoyable part of the concert that attested to the variety of the lineup over the course of the festival. He didn’t say much during the performance, but his dark and introspective songs also revealed an ironic side, with lyrics like “Dress sexy at my funeral, my good wife, for the first time in your life.” It was Cecil Taylor that people were there to see, however, and his set certainly pushed boundaries. It’s a good thing someone out there is testing the limits, but his music wasn’t musical enough, it seems, for even most of the All Tomorrow’s Parties crowd.

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