Primary Instrument: Cornet
Taylor Ho Bynum is a performer on cornet and various brass instruments, composer, bandleader, and interdisciplinary collaborator with artists in dance, film, and theater.
Critics have called him “a young brass master and compelling composer” (Jon Garelick, Boston Phoenix), “one of the most exciting figures in jazz’s new power generation” (Steve Dollar,Time Out Chicago), and “one of his generation’s top avant-garde figures” (Phillip Lutz, The New York Times).
In City Arts, David Adler writes “Bynum is a quick-witted and virtuosic player, steeped in the flutters, growls and extended techniques associated with the late Bill Dixon, the tunefulness of Don Cherry and bluesy humor of Lester Bowie”; in the Guardian (UK) John Fordam describes his playing as “splicing the slurs and bluesy elisions of the earliest jazz brass players into the spiky phrasing and rhythm- pattern conundrums of contemporary music.”
Bynum leads his Sextet and the chamber ensemble Spider Monkey Strings, co-leads the little big band Positive Catastrophe, works with such collective ensembles as the Tomas Fujiwara/Taylor Ho Bynum Duo, The Thirteenth Assembly, Book of Three, and The Convergence Quartet, and performs with artists including Jason Kao Hwang, Myra Melford, Joe Morris, Tyshawn Sorey and Cecil Taylor.
Bynum’s ongoing association with Anthony Braxton is recognized as one of the most fruitful partnerships of that iconic composer’s long career, and his work with Bill Dixon produced some of the departed trumpet innovator’s late masterpieces.
In addition, he is the vice president of Dave Douglas’s Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT Music), a founding partner of Firehouse 12 Records, and the president of Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation.
