Taylor loved to cite Duke Ellington. And in a spirited rush of poetic text that accompanied “Unit Structures,” his watershed 1966 album for the Blue Note label, he signaled a key break with mainstream classical tradition, courtesy of lines like: “Western notation blocks total absorption in the ‘action’ playing.”

Yet by the time reports of his death began to circulate on Thursday evening, and as former collaborators started dedicating performances to his memory, it had long been apparent that Taylor’s dynamism had helped to shape the contemporary classical sphere. Exponents of the “New Complexity” school, like Michael Finnissy, were directly inspired by Taylor’s torrents of sound. And his influence is also there in the work of Tyshawn Sorey.

Unfortunately, Taylor’s pieces for improvising orchestra have not been recorded or distributed nearly as often as his piano solos and small-group performances. But the artifacts we do have are potent. In the early going of this clip, from a 2000 gig with the Italian Instabile Orchestra, it’s fascinating to hear how comfortable this most powerful of players is within a large ensemble’s sound. Even as increasingly complex actions flower from his piano, nearly a minute into the second movement his is still one voice within a blended (if riotous) entity. The way the entire group manages to dance through some of Mr. Taylor’s dense compositional designs is a wonder — and may yet prove an influence on more generations of experimenters, in multiple genres. SETH COLTER WALLS

Read the Times’s obituary for Taylor.