The Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet’s debut release, The Middle Picture, documents both live and studio performances recorded at The Rotunda in Philadelphia and New Haven’s Firehouse 12 over the past two years.
"There is much in between the pressing issues of the world and the mundane toils of the everyday,” writes Bynum in the liner notes. “I call it the middle picture: the pursuit of one’s life goals, the search for one’s true calling, the cultivation of one’s personal relationships. While acknowledging the larger and smaller realities of the world, I try to focus on the middle picture, and hope that some of that positive energy and inspiration can influence the pictures on either side. The music on this album grows out of that middle picture, and is dedicated to that hope."
Musicians
Taylor Ho Bynum :: cornet/composer
Matt Bauder :: tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet
Mary Halvorson :: electric guitar
Evan O’Reilly :: electric guitar
Jessica Pavone :: viola and electric bass
Tomas Fujiwara :: drums
Press Reviews for The Middle Picture
...The Middle Picture (Firehouse 12) showcases Bynum's conceptual savvy as a bandleader, recasting the Miles Davis landmark "In a Silent Way" with secret-weapon guitarist Mary Halvorson, for instance. It also unpacks a lungful of quick-witted growls, squeals, guffaws, and other transient bursts of sound that make Bynum's playing as animated as a vintage Looney Toon.
-Steve Dollar, Time Out Chicago
From skittering miniatures to an elliptical take on "In a Silent Way," the disc offers consistently compelling listening.
-Time Out New York
The cornet player with the Braxton pedigree and the soundscape skills has been turning lots of heads. One reason is his clever designs for this two-guitar ensemble, which lets disintegration have its say while still stressing structure.
-Jim Macnie, Village Voice
Tying together conceptual threads from his previous releases, The Middle Picture is cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum's most fully realized album to date...a mixed set of studio and live recordings that veer from haunting atmospherics to turbulent, emotional climaxes. As members of a vibrant new musical community, they play with the sort of egoless interaction indicative of shared experience. Bynum holds promise as a member of a new generation of multifaceted improvisers leading the way into a new decade.
-Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com
Tastefully, he's not shy about hanging back as a player to make his statements through the group, both spare and elaborate, light and ambitious.
-Mike Heffley, Signal to Noise
Bynum's compositions frequently involve would-be traditional structures that are interfered with, subverted in some way, whether major or minor. This entire disc is crammed with such invention...
-Martin Longley, Jazz Review
Bynum's music is filled with a fabulous array of textures...He arranges and composes music in a way that really takes advantage of these resources, putting his mates into all kinds of provocative situations and combinations. From the start, Bynum's music is chock full of lovely, very studied counterlines and a fine sense of dynamics, too. It's a safe bet that most readers will like this one quite a bit.
-Jason Bivins, Cadence
The shape of jazz to come.
-Philip Clark, The Wire
While this music may well be classified as avant-garde, it kicks out many of the sub-genre's chilchés and betrays a commendable absorption of contemporary classical, folk-rock and just plain noise. Bynum is thinking outside of the jazz box without getting trapped inside another in the process.
-Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise
The Brooklyn-based cornetist avoids many of the avant-garde's hoarier clichés, opting instead for a clipped-and-breathy style that evokes the breeziest of explorers, melody-minded musicians such as Don Cherry and Lester Bowie. Bynum's band—which includes [Tomas] Fujiwara, a pair of electric guitarists, a saxophonist-clarinetist and a bassist-violist—is like no other outfit around.
-Brent Burton, JazzTimes
A measured, highly intelligent project that points the way forward for jazz as the decade wanes.
-Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, 9th Edition
Top 10 of 2007
-John Sharpe, AllAboutJazz.com
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