Taylor Ho Bynum Quintet

Taylor Ho Bynum will perform a new body of music over two nights, working with some of his closest collaborators drawing from his long-running Sextet and his 15-piece PlusTet creative orchestra. Tentatively titled Ambiguity, the music is designed to blur the lines between composition and improvisation, between solo and ensemble, between different genres, timbres, and instrumentations - celebrating the beauty and necessity of the unknown and the indefinable, the enigmatic and the subversive, the boundary-crossing Trickster spirit.

The music is designed to be realized by different sized ensembles. The first evening Bynum will perform with low-end heavy quintet, his cornet the sole horn over cello, two bassists and drums. The second night (March 1) adds three more horns and guitar for a highly unusual 9-piece configuration. The instrumentation intentionally features a wealth of pairings/doubles/mirrors – high/low duos in the brass, reeds, electric and acoustic strings; or four horns and four strings; or four treble clef and four bass clef instruments – all pivoting around the rhythmic center of the percussion. The music is designed for maximum creative flexibility – rather than existing as the fixed itinerary of a single journey, Ambiguity presents a web of creative possibility.

Taylor Ho Bynum – cornet
Tomeka Reid – cello
Stomu Takeishi – electric bass
Ken Filiano – acoustic bass
Tomas Fujiwara – drums