Taylor Ho Bynum (born 1975) is a musician, composer, educator and writer. His main instrument is the
cornet
The cornet (, ) is a brass instrument similar to the trumpet but distinguished from it by its conical bore, more compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B, though there is also a sopr ...
, but he also plays numerous similar instruments, including
flugelhorn
The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some ...
and
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
.
Early life
Bynum was born in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
[Wilmoth, Charli]
"Taylor Ho Bynum"
AllMusic. Retrieved August 30, 2017. in 1975,
and grew up in Boston.
["AMN Interviews: Taylor Ho Bynum"](_blank)
(November 19, 2013). Avant Music News. His parents were fans of music, and professional musicians were often in the family home.
Bynum's sister is writer
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (born February 14, 1972) is a Chinese American writer. She previously taught writing and literature in the Graduate MFA Writing program at Otis College of Art and Design until 2015. Bynum is a graduate of Brown University and ...
.
Bynum began playing the trumpet at the age of ten, and played classical music in youth orchestras when at high school.
At the age of 15, funding for music was cut at his school, so he joined the jazz big band at a local university instead; there, he was mentored by bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe. Working in an ice cream shop meant that Bynum was able to organize weekly jazz concerts there.
Around the early 1990s, Bynum first played with drummer Tomas Fujiwara. Continuing his interest in music, Bynum attended
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...
, where he studied with a major influence on his future –
Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chica ...
– as well as with
Pheeroan akLaff
Pheeroan akLaff (born Paul Maddox January 27, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. He began playing in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan and Ann Arbor, with R & B keyboardist Travis Biggs, funk keyboardist Nimrod “The Grinder” ...
,
Jay Hoggard
Jay Hoggard (born September 24, 1954) is an American jazz vibraphonist.
Biography
Jay Hoggard was raised in a religious family. He was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. His mother taught him how to play piano at ...
, and others.
Bynum graduated from Wesleyan in 1998.
Later life and career
In 1999, he played on two Braxton albums and a duo album with Eric Rosenthal.
In addition to Lowe and Braxton,
Bill Dixon
William Robert “Bill” Dixon (October 5, 1925 – June 16, 2010) was an American composer, improviser, visual artist, activist, and educator. Dixon was one of the seminal figures in free jazz and late twentieth-century contemporary music. Hi ...
was a formative influence on Bynum. His recording continued in 2001: on ''Trio Ex Nihilo'' with Curt Newton and Jeff Song, and with the Sound Visions Orchestra of
Alan Silva
Alan Silva (born Alan Lee da Silva; January 22, 1939 in Bermuda) is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player.
Biography
Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian fat ...
.
A year later, he recorded duets with Braxton and Rosenthal, as well as playing on the Fully Celebrated Orchestra's ''Marriage of Heaven and Earth'', and creating a band with himself as cornetist, plus an electric guitar and string quartet, together named SpiderMonkey Strings.
He also began a master's degree in music composition at Wesleyan.
His sextet released its first album, ''The Middle Picture'', in 2007, and ''Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths'' two years later.
Bynum was also a member of Jason Kao Hwang's quartet named Edge. From 2007, Bynum has been part of The Convergence Quartet, with pianist
Alexander Hawkins, bassist
Dominic Lash
Dominic Lash (born 18 January 1980 in Cambridge, England) is a Bristol based double bassist and film theorist. He was formerly a central figure in the musicians' collective Oxford Improvisers. Important long-term musical collaborators include An ...
, and drummer Harris Eisenstadt; they released their fourth album, ''Owl Jacket'', in 2016. In 2007, Bynum co-founded the record label Firehouse 12, with engineer Nick Lloyd.
[Farberman, Brad (March 2014) "Firehouse 12". ''The New York City Jazz Record''. p. 12.] The label's first release was Braxton's ''9 Compositions'' (consisting of nine CDs and one DVD), and Bynum's ''The Middle Picture'' was next.
In September 2010, Bynum toured
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
, traveling between gigs on a bicycle. In the same year, he recorded the quartet ''Searching for Adam''.
This was followed by ''Apparent Distance'' in 2011 and ''Navigation'' by his 7-Tette two years later.
The former was a four-part suite, funded by Chamber Music America's 2010 New Jazz Works. ''The Throes'' was also from 2011, and was co-led by
Nate Wooley
Nate or NATE may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Nate (given name)
*A nickname for Nathanael
*A nickname for Nathaniel
Organizations
* National Association for the Teaching of English, the UK subject teacher association for all aspec ...
, with whom Bynum had played for two years. Bynum released ''Navigation'' around 2013; it consisted of four performances of a single piece, with two being released on LP and two on CD (all four were released for digital download, which was also available to purchasers of either physical release).
Bynum expounded on his releasing four recordings of the same piece: "I want to ask listeners to consider the composition as a set of possibilities rather than a fixed document, to encourage them to enjoy the mutable nature of the music in multiple realizations rather than focusing on one particular performance."
[Gottschalk, Kurt (November 2013) "Navigation – Taylor Ho Bynum (Firehouse 12)". ''The New York City Jazz Record''. p. 16.] In 2014, he undertook another "Acoustic Bicycle Tour" from Vancouver, Canada down the West Coast to Tijuana, Mexico, captured in a short documentary film by Chris Jonas. ''Book of Three'' was a trio album in 2014, and ''Enter the PlusTet'' two years later was performed by a 15-piece band.
A new quartet, Illegal Crowns, was recorded in 2014.
[Ng, Ivana (December 2016) "Eponymous – Illegal Crowns (Rogue Art)". ''The New York City Jazz Record''. p. 17.]
In the area of education, Bynum has led jazz ensembles at
Northeastern University
Northeastern University (NU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in ...
,
and has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
since July 2017. He has also written about music for ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' magazine. He has also served as the executive director of Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation since 2010, producing and performing on most of Braxton's recent major projects, including his Trillium operas and his Sonic Genomes. A further activity has been organizing music events, including the Sound Genome project in Vancouver in 2010 and a festival at the Roulette club in New York City the following year.
[Woodard, Josef (March 2012) "Braxton's Allies". ''Down Beat''. p. 36.]
Composition and playing styles
A reviewer of ''Next'' commented that Bynum "deploys a litany of buzzes, whistles, drones, pinched fanfares and garrulous brass muttering in acrobatic arcs that twist and somersault." The overlaps of composition and improvisation are explored by Bynum; a reviewer of ''Illegal Crowns'' and ''Enter the PlusTet'' observed that they "are equally imaginative and revolutionary in their own
right, characterized by a dogged exploration of the ebb and flow between composition and spontaneity."
Awards
Bynum was ''
Down Beat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...
'' magazine's Rising Star Trumpeter in its critics poll of 2017.
[Lutz, Phillip (August 2017) "Cherry: Organic Flow". ''Down Beat''. p. 34.]
Discography
An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release.
As leader/co-leader
References
External links
"Taylor Ho Bynum: Notions of Inspiration" National Endowment for the Arts audio interview.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bynum, Taylor Ho
American cornetists
Living people
Wesleyan University alumni
1975 births
Cuneiform Records artists
CIMP artists
Clean Feed Records artists
RogueArt artists
Firehouse 12 Records artists