Taylor Ho Bynum is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary collaborator, producer, organizer, teacher, and writer. His expressionistic playing on cornet and expansive vision as a composer have garnered him critical attention on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and dozens more as a sideman, including The Ambiguity Manifesto, a top-10 choice in the 2019 NPR Jazz Critics’ Poll. His varied endeavors include leading his own bands, his Acoustic Bicycle Tours (where he travels to concerts solely by bike across thousands of miles), and his stewardship of Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Foundation (in which he served as executive director from 2010-2018, producing and performing on many major Braxton projects including two operas and multiple festivals). Bynum has worked with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor, and maintains current collaborative projects with Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Kyoko Kitamura, Joe Morris, and Tomeka Reid, among others. He is currently the director of the Coast Jazz Orchestra at Dartmouth College, where he also teaches music history, composition, and improvisation, and his writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Baffler, Point of Departure, and Sound American.

Illegal Crowns is a collective quartet that brings together the long-time collaborative trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, with the French pianist Benoît Delbecq. All four artists are critically recognized as leading figures in contemporary music, and have created multiple original compositions written specifically for this group. The band has recorded two albums (the self-titled debut album released in 2016, and The No-Nosed Puppet released in 2019, both on the RogueArt label) and has toured throughout Europe and Canada, and will be making its long overdue US debut with this tour.