Anthony Braxton & Taylor Ho Bynum

Wednesday, September 22

Bezanson Recital Hall   8:00 pm
$10; students: $5

 

The gifted trumpeter and composer Taylor Ho Bynum joins his mentor, and 10-year collaborator, saxophonist and composer Anthony Braxton in a rare duet performance. The culmination of Ho Bynum's New England bicycle tour (dates in six states via two-wheels), this historic concert in Amherst pairs "one of the most exciting figures in jazz's new power generation" (Time Out Chicago), with one of the seminal musical figures of our time.

"Taylor Ho Bynum is one of those once-in-a-lifetime talents who can play everything and always sound like himself," writes Robin D.G. Kelley. "Remarkable technique, inventiveness, energy...he can really 'talk' with that horn of his and the tunes he's written are mad genius."

Bynum's resume includes extensive performances and recordings with Braxton, and the large ensembles of Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor. He is also a member of groups led by Myra Melford, Jason Kao Hwang and Joe Morris. Bynum's most recent releases include a duo with drummer Tomas Fujiwara, Stepwise (NotTwo), Taylor Ho Bynum & SpiderMonkey Strings' Madeleine Dreams (Firehouse 12), Positive Catastrophe's Garabatos Volume One (Cuneiform), The 13th Assembly's (un)sentimental (Important Records), and the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet's Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths (Hatology). In addition, he is a curator and vice president of Dave Douglas' Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT Music), a partner in Firehouse 12 Records, and the president of Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation.

"To judge from his album of duets with Anthony Braxton," writes Francis Davis, "Bynum has it all, including a devilish sense of humor...one of the savviest trumpeters to come along in recent years, a growling sound-and-space man in the tradition of Lester Bowie."

Anthony Braxton (born in 1945) has had as great an impact on creative music as anyone in the last 50 years. Since moving from his native Chicago, where he was active with The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Braxton has released well over 100 albums, won a MacArthur Award, is a full professor at Wesleyan University and continues to perform, record, write, and influence the course of arts in America. "Whatever one calls it," writes Chris Kelsey, "there is no questioning the originality of his vision; Anthony Braxton creates music of enormous sophistication and passion that is unlike anything else that has come before it."