Sirone with Cecil Taylor Unit - live in Köln 1978

We posted a little while back a concert with Rashied Ali, Charles Gayle and Sirone to commemorate the passing away of Ali. Now the news have reached us that Sirone has also passed away, thus providing us with an opportunity to commemorate his musicianship, though obviously not the most happy occasion for doing so.

The Ali concert was from last year and this one goes back 31 years to 1978. Both have one thing in common - performed and recorded in Germany. Sirone - Norrie Jones - settled more or less permanently in Berlin in the late 80s, finding a more conducive environment for his composing skills and perhaps a more receptive audience as well.

As with Lateef, Sirone is not a player who wants to be pigeon-holed: "I know that this music that has been labeled free jazz but nothing is free and this music free jazz certainly isn't free. As a composer, I put a definite attention towards the composition merely as a path of reaching the point where we can find that magical moment when you understand...that to reach that point of that freedom is discipline and that discipline is a study, this is why that word doesn't sit so well with me because it has been abused, the music has been abused by that word 'free'. sometimes you get a lot of noise" - from an online interview with All About Jazz.

This line-up is certainly among my favourite CT Units:

CECIL TAYLOR UNIT

Cecil Taylor (piano)
Jimmy Lyons (alto saxophone)
Raphe Malik (trumpet)
Ramsey Ameen (violin)
Sirone (bass)
Ronald Shannon Jackson (drums)

Date: June 10th, 1978
Place: Köln
Venue: Großer Sendesaal, Funkhaus

Track 1: Third part of one (23:19)
Track 2: Third worlds making (34:08) (inc)

or, alternatively

Third World Makings: 1 I, Part 1 5:48 2 I, Part 2 28:25 3 II, Part 2 23:17

This is a very dynamic and forceful combo, so the listener is in for an hour of hyper-intense interplay. It ends rather abruptly, indicating that there might have been more, but as this was a radio broadcast, I suppose that's what there was time for. Off that wonderful Dime, so thanks to posters and seeders and reseeders etc.