Taylor Ho Bynum

Bynum was born in Baltimore[1] in 1975,[2] and grew up in Boston.[3] His parents were fans of music, and professional musicians were often in the family home.[3] Bynum's sister is writer Sarah Shun-lien Bynum.[4]

Bynum began playing the trumpet at the age of ten, and played classical music in youth orchestras when at high school.[3] 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.[5] Working in an ice cream shop meant that Bynum was able to organize weekly jazz concerts there.[3] Around the early 1990s, Bynum first played with drummer Tomas Fujiwara.[6] Continuing his interest in music, Bynum attended Wesleyan University, where he studied with a major influence on his future – Anthony Braxton – as well as with Pheeroan akLaff, Jay Hoggard, and others.[3] Bynum graduated from Wesleyan in 1998.[1]

In 1999, he played on two Braxton albums and a duo album with Eric Rosenthal.[1] In addition to Lowe and Braxton, Bill Dixon was a formative influence on Bynum.[7] His recording continued in 2001: on Trio Ex Nihilo with Curt Newton and Jeff Song, and with the Sound Visions Orchestra of Alan Silva.[1] 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.[1] He also began a master's degree in music composition at Wesleyan.[1] His sextet released its first album, The Middle Picture, in 2007, and Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths two years later.[1] Bynum was also a member of Jason Kao Hwang's quartet named Edge.[8] From 2007, Bynum has been part of The Convergence Quartet, with pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist Dominic Lash, and drummer Harris Eisenstadt; they released their fourth album, Owl Jacket, in 2016.[9] In 2007, Bynum co-founded the record label Firehouse 12, with engineer Nick Lloyd.[10] 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.[10]

In September 2010, Bynum toured New England, traveling between gigs on a bicycle.[11] In the same year, he recorded the quartet Searching for Adam.[1] This was followed by Apparent Distance in 2011 and Navigation by his 7-Tette two years later.[1] The former was a four-part suite, funded by Chamber Music America's 2010 New Jazz Works.[12] The Throes was also from 2011, and was co-led by Nate Wooley, with whom Bynum had played for two years.[13] 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).[14] 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."[14] 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.[15][16] Book of Three was a trio album in 2014, and Enter the PlusTet two years later was performed by a 15-piece band.[1] A new quartet, Illegal Crowns, was recorded in 2014.[17]

In the area of education, Bynum has led jazz ensembles at Northeastern University,[1] and has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since July 2017.[18][19] He has also written about music for The New Yorker magazine.[20] He has also served as the executive director of Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation[21] since 2010, producing and performing on most of Braxton's recent major projects, including his Trillium operas[22][23] and his Sonic Genomes.[24][25] 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.[26]

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."[27] 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."[17]

Bynum was Down Beat magazine's Rising Star Trumpeter in its critics poll of 2017.[28]

An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release.

• "Taylor Ho Bynum: Notions of Inspiration". National Endowment for the Arts audio interview.