By Matt Micucci
From February 26 right through to May 14, 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City will present Open Plan, an experimental five-part exhibition using the Museum’s dramatic fifth-floor as a single open gallery.
As part of the exhibition, from April 15 to 24, pianist Cecil Taylor will take up residence in the fifth-floor gallery along with friends and fellow performers.
Cecil Taylor is one of the pioneers of the free jazz movement. Born on March 25, 1929, Taylor is a pianist and poet as well as one of Ameica’s most innovative and uncompromising musicians. His music is characterized by an extremely energeic and physical approach, and whose work draws on a myriad of different musical styles conveyed through radical improvisation.
This residency will feature a series of live performances amid a retrospective environment that will include documentation of Taylor’s career, including videos, audio, notational scores, photographs, poetry, and other ephemera.
The largest column-free museum exhibition space in New York, the Neil Bluhm Family Galleries in the Whitney Museum of American Art measure 18,200 square feet and feature windows with striking views east into the city and west to the Hudson River, making for an expansive and inspiring canvas.
Open Plan: Cecil Taylor is organized by curator and curator of performance Jay Sanders and Lawrence Kumpf, artistic director, ISSUE Project Room, with senior curatorial assistant Greta Hartenstein and Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow Lauren Rosati.