Cecil Taylor

Unit Structures

First released1966

Unit Structures, recorded in 1966 and released in 1966 on Blue Note Records, was captured at A&M Studios in Hollywood, California. The album was produced by Alfred Lion, Blue Note's co-founder, with engineer Rudy Van Gelder handling the technical aspects, though Van Gelder's typical New Jersey studio was not used for this session. The recording featured Cecil Taylor's avant-garde piano approach alongside a sextet including saxophonists Jimmy Lyons and Archie Shepp, reflecting the free jazz experimentation of the mid-1960s. The session represented an important documentation of Taylor's compositional and improvisational methods during a period of significant creative development in his career.