Taylor Ho Bynum (born 1975) is a musician, composer, educator and writer. His main instrument is the cornet, but he also plays numerous similar instruments, including flugelhorn and trumpet.

Bynum was born in Baltimore^[1] in 1975,^[2] and grew up in Boston.^[3] His parents were fans of music, and professional musicians were often in the family home.^[3] Bynum's sister is writer Sarah Shun-lien Bynum.^[4]

Bynum began playing the trumpet at the age of ten, and played classical music in youth orchestras when at high school.^[3] At the age of 15, funding for music was cut at his school, so he joined the jazz big band at a local university instead; there, he was mentored by bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe.^[5] Working in an ice cream shop meant that Bynum was able to organize weekly jazz concerts there.^[3] Around the early 1990s, Bynum first played with drummer Tomas Fujiwara.^[6] Continuing his interest in music, Bynum attended Wesleyan University, where he studied with a major influence on his future – Anthony Braxton – as well as with Pheeroan akLaff, Jay Hoggard, and others.^[3] Bynum graduated from Wesleyan in 1998.^[1]

In 1999, he played on two Braxton albums and a duo album with Eric Rosenthal.^[1] In addition to Lowe and Braxton, Bill Dixon was a formative influence on Bynum.^[7] His recording continued in 2001: on Trio Ex Nihilo with Curt Newton and Jeff Song, and with the Sound Visions Orchestra of Alan Silva.^[1] A year later, he recorded duets with Braxton and Rosenthal, as well as playing on the Fully Celebrated Orchestra's Marriage of Heaven and Earth, and creating a band with himself as cornetist, plus an electric guitar and string quartet, together named SpiderMonkey Strings.^[1] He also began a master's degree in music composition at Wesleyan.^[1] His sextet released its first album, The Middle Picture, in 2007, and Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths two years later.^[1] Bynum was also a member of Jason Kao Hwang's quartet named Edge.^[8] From 2007, Bynum has been part of The Convergence Quartet, with pianist Alexander Hawkins, bassist Dominic Lash, and drummer Harris Eisenstadt; they released their fourth album, Owl Jacket, in 2016.^[9] In 2007, Bynum co-founded the record label Firehouse 12, with engineer Nick Lloyd.^[10] The label's first release was Braxton's 9 Compositions (consisting of nine CDs and one DVD), and Bynum's The Middle Picture was next.^[10]

In September 2010, Bynum toured New England, traveling between gigs on a bicycle.^[11] In the same year, he recorded the quartet Searching for Adam.^[1] This was followed by Apparent Distance in 2011 and Navigation by his 7-Tette two years later.^[1] The former was a four-part suite, funded by Chamber Music America's 2010 New Jazz Works.^[12] The Throes was also from 2011, and was co-led by Nate Wooley, with whom Bynum had played for two years.^[13] Bynum released Navigation around 2013; it consisted of four performances of a single piece, with two being released on LP and two on CD (all four were released for digital download, which was also available to purchasers of either physical release).^[14] Bynum expounded on his releasing four recordings of the same piece: "I want to ask listeners to consider the composition as a set of possibilities rather than a fixed document, to encourage them to enjoy the mutable nature of the music in multiple realizations rather than focusing on one particular performance."^[14] In 2014, he undertook another "Acoustic Bicycle Tour" from Vancouver, Canada down the West Coast to Tijuana, Mexico, captured in a short documentary film by Chris Jonas.^[15][16] Book of Three was a trio album in 2014, and Enter the PlusTet two years later was performed by a 15-piece band.^[1] A new quartet, Illegal Crowns, was recorded in 2014.^[17]

In the area of education, Bynum has led jazz ensembles at Northeastern University,^[1] and has been the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College since July 2017.^[18][19] He has also written about music for The New Yorker magazine.^[20] He has also served as the executive director of Anthony Braxton's Tri-Centric Foundation^[21] since 2010, producing and performing on most of Braxton's recent major projects, including his Trillium operas^[22][23] and his Sonic Genomes.^[24][25] A further activity has been organizing music events, including the Sound Genome project in Vancouver in 2010 and a festival at the Roulette club in New York City the following year.^[26]

A reviewer of Next commented that Bynum "deploys a litany of buzzes, whistles, drones, pinched fanfares and garrulous brass muttering in acrobatic arcs that twist and somersault."^[27] The overlaps of composition and improvisation are explored by Bynum; a reviewer of Illegal Crowns and Enter the PlusTet observed that they "are equally imaginative and revolutionary in their own right, characterized by a dogged exploration of the ebb and flow between composition and spontaneity."^[17]

Bynum was Down Beat magazine's Rising Star Trumpeter in its critics poll of 2017.^[28]

An asterisk (*) indicates that the year is that of release.