The world-renowned improviser and composer Taylor Ho Bynum’s Acoustic Bicycle Tour is a five week, 1800-mile journey that is equal parts performance art piece, philosophical statement, celebration of musical community, and exercise in extreme physicality. He joins the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble in a concert to perform his music, as well as newly commissioned works by Douglas Detrick, Ben Darwish and Thomas Barber.

Sunday, September 7, 2014
7 pm at the Central Hotel in St. John’s
8608 N Lombard St, Portland, OR 97203
$5 Students/Seniors, $10 General Admission

Tickets available HERE  or at the door

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Taylor Ho Bynum

Hailed as “one of the city’s most valuable new-music institutions” by Brett Campbell of the Willamette Week, the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble embarks on its 7th season of performances, record releases, and community building activities. This concert with Taylor Ho Bynum marks a few important milestones for the organization—our first co-presentation with the Creative Music Guild and guest soloist of international prominence.

Bynum and PJCE Executive Director Douglas Detrick worked together as administrators of the Festival of New Trumpet Music in 2011 through 2013, a festival founded by jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas that takes place all over New York City. Since then they’ve kept in touch, but this will be the first time they’ve performed together. This opportunity, which is made possible by the national arts grantmaker Creative Capital, is perfect for the type of community conversation and music-making that the PJCE and Bynum are both interested in.

Bynum brings an amazing breadth of experience to bear in both music making and community building. He has worked with who’s who list of prominent musicians, and makes an unexpected yet incredibly captivating range of sounds on his instrument. He performs brilliantly as a musician, and as an activist and administrator in the arts. He sees this entire project as a conversation about the future of our society’s carbon footprint and as a musical performance combined into one inseparable thing.

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The Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble

Finally, he sets out on this journey to answer a few question: Can a musician ride over 1800 miles on a bike and still lift his horn up, let alone perform at a high level? Can he also organize large and small groups of local musicians and audiences to meet him along the way? What can we learn about the possibilities of transportation by bike as we continue to meet the challenges of climate change? We’re looking forward to showing some of the incredible possibilities of the human body and the human spirit!


 

Taylor Ho Bynum (b. 1975) is a composer, cornet player, bandleader and interdisciplinary collaborator. Critics have called him “a singular and thrilling artist” (All About Jazz), “a major force on the outward-bound side of the jazz continuum” (The Boston Globe) and “a provocateur in the guise of a consensus builder” (The New York Times). Bynum currently leads his Sextet and 7-tette, and works with many collective ensembles including a duo with drummer Tomas Fujiwara, the improv trio Book of Three, the UK/US collaborative Convergence Quartet, the dance/music interdisciplinary ensemble Quartet Collective, and the trans-idiomatic little big band Positive Catastrophe.

His endeavors include his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he travels to concerts solely by bike across expansive regions like New England or the West Coast) and his stewardship of artist-driven non-profit organizations like Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation. Bynum’s ongoing association with Braxton is recognized as one of the most fruitful partnerships of that iconic composer’s career, and his work with Bill Dixon produced some of the departed trumpet innovator’s late masterpieces. He has collaborated with other legendary figures including Cecil Taylor and Wadada Leo Smith and performs with many forward-thinking peers, and has toured throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent awards include a 2013 Performing Arts Grant from Creative Capital and a 2013 Artist Fellowship in Music Composition from the Connecticut Office of the Arts.

The Portland Jazz Composers’ Ensemble is a 12-piece group which commissions and performs original works by its members and by other jazz composers in the Portland music community and beyond.  It is our mission to operate a large musical ensemble, to commission and perform original works by members of the ensemble and by other jazz composers in the Portland music community and elsewhere, to act as a forum for the development and presentation of works for large ensemble by established and emerging jazz composers, and to engage and enrich community awareness and appreciation of contemporary music.  We also operate a grassroots label, PJCE Records, which releases albums of original music by local jazz artists.

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For more information and images,
contact Douglas Detrick, Executive Director, PJCE

portlandjazz@gmail.com or (503)347-1416
pjce.org

 

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