Grown from a sextet to this 9-tette, cornetist/composer Taylor Ho Bynum's ensemble brings together some of the finest improvisers from the Boston and New York scenes for compositions that merge orchestration and allow flexibility in interpretation, as heard in these 7 lyrical pieces, the last 3 turning the first 3 on their heads in reworked, expanded versions.
Format: 2 LPS Condition: New Released: 2019 Country: USA Packaging: Double LP in a Gatefold Sleeve Recorded at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, on March 3rd and 4th, 2018, by Nick Lloyd.
"The Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet (occasionally growing all the way to a 9-tette) has been Bynum's primary working ensemble since 2005, and has toured throughout the USA and Europe. The group's latest release, The Ambiguity Manifesto, follows the critically acclaimed releases The Middle Picture (Firehouse 12, 2007), Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths (hatOLOGY, 2008), Apparent Distance (Firehouse 12, 2011), and the four-album set Navigation: The Complete Firehouse 12 Recordings (Firehouse 12, 2013).
The ensemble brings together some of the finest musicians from the Boston and New York scenes, demonstrating a remarkable diversity of backgrounds and generations, with members of the group born in every decade from the 1940s to the '80s. All the musicians are composers and bandleaders in their own right, and have collaborated with some of the most admired figures in creative music, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Bill Barron, Tim Berne, Bobby Bradford, Anthony Braxton, Connie Crothers, Thad Jones, Warne Marsh, Myra Melford, Nicole Mitchell, Jason Moran, Marc Ribot, Roswell Rudd, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, and countless others."-Firehouse 12
"Taylor Ho Bynum's The Ambiguity Manifesto, with its oxymoronic title, is the third album in what the cornetist-composer calls an "accidental trilogy." Following his Firehouse 12 Records releases Navigation (Possible Abstracts XII & XIII) (2013) and Enter the Plus Tet (2016), Bynum recognized a form-however unconventional-both in the composition and performing of these large ensemble works. With a 9-tette made up of members of his sextet and Plus Tet, Bynum adds Stomu Takeishi on electric bass.
Bynum cites Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon-all of whom he has worked with-as affecting this music, but those, or any amalgam of influences, are not as apparent as the composer's own approach. There may not be a formal narrative holding the material together, but there are linked ideas where the initial outlines are analyzed and turned inside-out as the album progresses. Bynum doesn't overload the concept, letting the group distinguish themselves through their individual and collective interpretations.
The quirkily swinging, propulsive rhythm of "Neither When nor Where" opens the album on an exuberant note and leads into the brief, constantly-shifting "Enter Ally" with its multifaceted rhythms and free improvisations. Tomas Fujiwara's kit ushers in "Real/Unreal (for Ursula K. Le Guin)" with Tomeka Reid's cello and Bynum lending a solemnity to the ten-minute tribute to the late, great science fiction and non-fiction writer and lecturer. The most darkly melodic piece on The Ambiguity Manifesto, it nevertheless builds to a more disordered conclusion, apropos of the two worlds Le Guin called home. The seventeen-minute "(G)host(aa/ab)" is by turns a carnival-like, theatrical, and rock-driven extravaganza with the entire ensemble keeping countless balls in the air. Slightly longer, "Enter (g) Neither" is a more episodic series of free improvisations held together by Fujiwara's magic.
As always, the brilliance of the horns of Bynum, Jim Hobbs, Ingrid Laubrock, and Bill Lowe, guitarist Mary Halvorson's ingeniously transformative presence and the imaginativeness of bassist Ken Filiano, give many lives to the music. For all the complexity of The Ambiguity Manifesto, there is a resounding clarity to the entire project. It is a testament to an exceptional-and unique-composer and the first-rate company he keeps."-Karl Ackermann, All About Jazz