Taylor Ho Bynum - cornet; Alexander Hawkins - piano

Alexander Hawkins and Taylor Ho Bynum have collaborated for nearly twenty years, initially in the Convergence Quartet, and subsequently also in groups led by Bynum and Anthony Braxton. Despite these many years of a shared and complimentary aesthetic, however, this tour - featuring new compositions from both players - represents their first extended work as a duo, as well as their first performances in North America.

Taylor Ho Bynum is a musician, teacher, and writer, with a background including work in composition, performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, production, organizing, and advocacy. His expressionistic playing on cornet and other brass instruments, his expansive vision as composer and conductor, and his idiosyncratic improvisational approach have been documented on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and over a hundred as a sideperson. His past endeavors include his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he traveled to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles) and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation (which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects, including two operas, multiple festivals, and dozens of recordings). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor and currently enjoys playing with friends in collective ensembles like his duo with Tomas Fujiwara, Illegal Crowns (with Fujiwara, Benoit Delbecq, and Mary Halvorson), and Geometry (with Kyoko Kitamura, Tomeka Reid, and Joe Morris), and as a sideperson in groups led by Fujiwara, Reid, Jim Hobbs, Bill Lowe, Bill Cole, and William Parker. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Point of Departure and Sound American, and he has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since 2017. 

Alexander Hawkins is a composer, pianist, and organist who is ‘unlike anything else in modern creative music’. Regarded as one of his generation's most innovative thinkers, his music has been said by The Guardian newspaper to sound 'like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details.' Amongst his many other activities (which range from solo concerts to larger-scale commissions), he is also a committed performer in the duo format, in which he has appeared live and on record with Sofia Jernberg, Nicole Mitchell, Evan Parker, Tomeka Reid, Hamid Drake, Esperanza Spalding, Angelica Niescier, John Surman, Wadada Leo Smith, and Han Bennink, amongst many others. Other collaborations have included with the likes of Marshall Allen, Anthony Braxton, Shabaka Hutchings, Joe McPhee, and Jonny Greenwood. For well over a decade, he has also been noted for his performances in the bands of legendary South African drummer, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke.

He has been widely commissioned, by the likes of the BBC, events such as the London and Berlin Jazz Festivals, venues such as the Pierre Boulez Saal, and contemporary music groups such as the Riot Ensemble. He was named 'Instrumentalist of the Year' in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards. In 2018, he was elected a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri. www.alexanderhawkinsmusic.com