I’m still processing the fact that I saw Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, William Parker and Tony Oxley playing together on the same stage last night, at the Royal Festival Hall. It was the kind of show it’s hard to write about because there was just so much happening, at all times, even in the pauses, the quiet moments, something was always happening, something was always in the air, passed around between the musicians and never dropped.

Although the group playing was incredible, one of the highlights for me was a solo set by William Parker — wasn’t expecting it, for a start. I don’t know how long he played for: time kind of folded in on itself, the way it does when music really forces you into its space rather than making its way into yours. After the rolling, multi-hued sounds of Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley’s opening set and before the all-out brilliance of the full band, this was an interlude of weird, stark power. Parker stood with his head bent and face obscured by a cap: big, anonymous and uncompromising. Rumbles of noise, harmonics like burnished blades, every stroke of the bow pulling the sound together into an almost visible, albeit abstract, skeleton. And these moments of sweetness that spiralled out of the heavy structure like voices, tremulous and plaintive. And I couldn’t move. It felt good to sit that still, to let my mind out of its loops for a minute and into some kind of fierce peace.

And Cecil Taylor, I swear he’s made out of spider-silk or rubber-tree bark. Wrists like snakes, fingers seemingly drawing the notes out from the keys, not striking them in. Piano as fast-moving water, not static percussion.

It was very hard to write about. I mean, it is very hard to write about.

Luckily, Plan B jazz gent Daniel Spicer was also there, so I’m sure he’ll have something more proper to say about it, which you may be able to read in the next Plan B or on this site. And if you want to hear the concert, it’s going to be on Radio 3 on Friday evening.