The prevailing orthodoxy of mainstream jazz was, and remains, for the pianist’s hands to be deployed in some form of ‘melody and accompaniment’ texture. Taylor not only looked back to Tatum, Earl Hines and others by reasserting a two-handed approach, but also brought a patterned beauty to the relationship between the hands. Symmetry was one concern, as when they would simultaneously trace outwards towards the extremes of the keyboard; but parallelism was also reinstated, as when his two hands harnessed together would construct lines out of volleys of shifting clusters, distant cousins of the block chords of Garner and the comets which streaked throughout Tatum’s universe.
schöner text von alexander hawkins über taylor in the wire.
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