Home » Jazz Musicians » Alan Silva

Alan Silva

A free jazz and improvisational musician, American composer/orchestral leader Alan Silva is a master of numerous instruments, among them the violin, cello, synthesizer, piano, and, especially, the double bass. His performances and recordings as a bassist, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, are legendary. During this period, he helped record some of the most explorative releases in improvised music, working with the likes of Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sunny Murray, Bill Dixon, Frank Wright, Andrew Hill, and Jimmy Lyons. In 1969 he founded his own ensemble, the Celestial Communication Orchestra, organized sessions for smaller group settings, and tried his decidedly uncompromising, fresh approach to music on other instruments, most recently the keyboards.

A British citizen prior to the age of 18, Alan Silva was born in Bermuda on January 22, 1939. His father was originally from Africa, while his mother was a native of Portugal. At age five, he relocated with his family to the New York, spending the remainder of his childhood in Harlem. Influenced by the rich musical culture of the neighborhood, Silva collected jazz recordings and, because he was too young to attend club performances, listened to bebop on the radio. Around 1950 he started taking piano and drum lessons from various musicians who enjoyed the same style. "The Ellington band played our church when I was 12," he recalled in an interview with Dan Warburton for the Wire magazine. "Harlem was progressive

Tags

9
Album Review

Cecil Taylor: With (Exit) To Student Studies Revisited

Read "With (Exit) To Student Studies Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Documenting the evolution of Cecil Taylor is an undertaking that is way beyond the pay grade of most listeners. Just as in the study of homo sapiens (yes, us) where there is no critical moment (the missing link) that we can definitely pinpoint where our ancestors established language, art and importantly, abstract thought, Taylor's music can be thought of in similar terms. Obviously his approach didn't emerge fully formed. Or did it? No, that is an irrational thought, but a ...

13
Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Chris May


This story has been revisited before, in the context of an Albert Ayler review, but good stories bear repeating, particularly when they are instructive ones. So here it is again... During a May 2021 interview with All About Jazz, the reed player Shabaka Hutchings was asked to name six albums which had made a more than usually deep impression on him. One of those Hutchings chose was Cecil Taylor's Silent Tongues: Live At Montreux '74 (Freedom, 1975). “This ...

Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


La pubblicazione di Mixed To Unit Structures, nella meritevole collana Revisited Series della Ezz-thetics, sotto-etichetta della svizzera Hat Hut, riunisce due date di registrazione importanti nella vicenda di Cecil Taylor, distribuite tra l'ottobre 1961 e il maggio 1966. La prima, composta dai tre brani “Pots," “Bulbs" e “Mixed," era stata pubblicata dall'etichetta Impulse! nel disco Into the Hot, a nome di Gil Evans. I successivi quattro pezzi costituivano il disco Unit Structures, siglato originariamente da Blue Note. ...

3
Album Review

Cecil Taylor: Mixed To Unit Structures Revisited

Read "Mixed To Unit Structures Revisited" reviewed by Mark Corroto


A listener could make it their life's work to absorb and appreciate the music the music of Cecil Taylor. One could possibly approach it as a scholar and musician through notation and transcription—not the recommended approach. Such a task would be similar to the process of systematizing a DNA sequence. Taylor's music, and pardon this analogy, might be best grasped as one might attend to the oxymoronic genre noise music. If you are still reading, allow an explanation. ...

131
Album Review

Alan Silva & William Parker: A Hero

Read "A Hero" reviewed by Michael McCaw


Alan Silva and William Parker collectively inform much of the role and possibilities of the acoustic bass that have been developed since the 1970s. From participating in Cecil Taylor-led ensembles and loft scenes to recording and performing some of the most challenging and rewarding music over the past thirty-some odd years, they have a storied and interwoven history. Consequently, an album of Parker/Silva duets could potentially be a historic moment. And while the results documented on A Hero's Welcome: Pieces ...

195
Album Review

Alan Silva: Alan Silva & the Sound Visions Orchestra

Read "Alan Silva & the Sound Visions Orchestra" reviewed by Derek Taylor


As the inaugural group for the 1999 Vision Festival, following closely on the heels of Joseph Jarman’s vocal invocation, Alan Silva’s Sound Visions Orchestra seemed the ideal vehicle to usher in the ten celebratory days of community-empowering creative music. Employing many of many of the festival’s performers and signaling the triumphant culmination of Silva’s ambitious plans for large-scale improvisatory interplay the group promised monumental music. Sadly a succession of sobering setbacks beset the band once they took the stage. First, ...

186
Album Review

Alan Silva & Oluyemi Thomas: Transmissions

Read "Transmissions" reviewed by Derek Taylor


The practice of harping long and loud on the lack of public notoriety or understanding afforded creative improvising musicians has become an almost customary tack in reportage of the music. A “resignation to obscurity” mindset prevails among many producers, listeners and even musicians that this is orphic status is simply their lot in life. Still the musicians survive exercising their talents behind the veil of popular ignorance doing the only thing they must- nurturing and elevating their art beyond the ...

Read more articles
118

Recording

Alan Silva's Celestrial Communication Orchestra and the Big Box Set

Alan Silva's Celestrial Communication Orchestra and the Big Box Set

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards

Bassist, key- boardist, sometimes violinist, composer, bandleader, father-figure of the new thing, Alan Silva cannot be dismissed and will not go away. You don't like avant jazz? That's your business. But to anyone else, he's been a seminal force in the new jazz (now coming onto 50 years of age) from the very beginning, playing bass with the greats, giving the music a personal stamp on his small-group recordings, and leading off and on one of the titanic avant big ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

With (Exit) To...

Ezz-thetics
2022

buy

Mixed to Unit...

Ezz-thetics
2021

buy

Plug In

Unknown label
2013

buy

Parallel Worlds

Unknown label
2012

buy

Crimson Lip

Unknown label
2011

buy

A Hero

Eremite Records
2005

buy

Videos

Similar

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.