Ruvo in September 2000 saw the arrival of the Italian Instabile Orchestra fresh from a triumphally successful appearance at the Chicago Jazz Fest (where it had performed an all-Instabile programme of compositions by the group’s members), ready to embark on a totally differently structured venture with unabated energy. Taylor’s seemingly extreme approach made certain that none of the musicians could succumb to tiredness, turn on their automatic pilot and trot out ready-made clichés. But Cecil Taylor did more than that. He obliged the musicians to take a fresh look at themselves and to rethink their basic ideas of what making unconventional music implies. What he did was to remind them of the ideas that had originally inspired the birth of the Instabile in Noci in 1990: the idea of a musical rebirth during a performance, of reworking elements from the score live in concert, and of looking deep within oneself to let loose a music whose freedom and energy is, as the listener can clearly perceive, no mere superficial patina. This meeting of two legends of avantgarde jazz remains a unique and special event. For although Taylor has not worked a huge number of times with orchestral groups, this was certainly the first time in Europe that he had had the chance to work with a group that already existed, rather than the more usual pick-up band situation. It was a meeting which was repeated a year and a half later in March 2002 in Paris for the Banlieues Bleues Festival, and, by the time this CD comes out, there will have been a third encounter in September 2003 at the Sant’Anna Arresi Festival in Sardinia. - from Enja Records website