Café Sweden

It is a well rehearsed story that some of the major innovators of modern jazz were, in the early 1960s, struggling to get recording contracts or gigs in America. This led players like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor to try their hand across the Atlantic. These players found a particularly warm reception in Scandinavia, and live recordings from any of these in Sweden or Denmark are well worth looking out for. This nicely packaged reissue captures Taylor’s performances at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre, with three bonus tracks recorded at Stockholm’s Golden Circle. For fans of Taylor, the material (with the exception of the bonus tracks which have not been previously released) will be familiar from the Live! At the Café Montmartre and Nefertiti: the beautiful one has come. This set comes with a booklet with the sleeve notes from these previous releases, featuring Erik Weidermann’s insightful comments on the performances and the developments of Taylor’s playing.