Trumpet player Peter Evans celebrates 15 years of solo performance with the release of his new two-hour album, Lifeblood, a return to the solo album format after a five-year break. His work has recently seen extreme developments in terms of large-scale form, manipulation of texture(s), use of the microphone, and the narrative (if at times inscrutable and non-linear) quality. The goal has moved far beyond any exploration of “extended technique” instrumental innovation which is so often the focus of solo improvised performance. Layers and lines of sound are woven into spontaneous compositions that create tapestries of colors, rhythms, and melodies; they are meant to create a complete space for the listener to inhabit, a place to challenge limits and explore the more transcendent and mysterious potentialities of musical experience.

To open the evening, Taylor Ho Bynum goes electric with a new quintet of old friends, featuring “brassy noise over off-center groove, with a purple hue.” Taylor Ho Bynum’s Rank Sentimentalist includes Bynum (cornet), Marika Hughes (cello), Evan Patrick (electric guitar) Stomu Takeishi (bass guitar), and Chad Taylor (drums).

Peter Evans is a trumpet player and improvisor/composer based in New York City. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation; his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, Evans works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. He leads the Peter Evans Quintet and the Zebulon trio, is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta), and is constantly experimenting and forming new configurations with like-minded players. As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation’s Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation for the 2015 Newport Jazz Festival. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively. He has worked with some of the leading figures in new music: John Zorn, Kassa Overall, Jim Black, Weasel Walter, Levy Lorenzo, Nate Wooley, Steve Schick, Mary Halvorson, Joe McPhee, George Lewis, and performs with both ICE and the Wet Ink Ensemble. He has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011.

Lifeblood is released on Peter Evan’s More is More Records. Digital copies of the album will be available for sale on custom USB drives for the first time.

Taylor Ho Bynum has spent his career navigating the intersections between structure and improvisation — through musical composition, performance, and interdisciplinary collaboration, and through production, organizing, teaching, writing, and advocacy. Bynum’s expressionistic playing on cornet and his expansive vision as a composer have garnered him critical attention on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and dozens more as a sideman. He currently leads his Sextet and 7-tette, most recently documented on the critically acclaimed four-album set “Navigation”; the debut recording of his PlusTet, a 15-piece ensemble made up of his closest long-time collaborators, will be released in the fall of 2016.

His varied endeavors include 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 (which he serves as executive director, producing and performing on most of Braxton’s recent major projects). In addition to his own bands, his ongoing collaboration with Braxton, past work with other legendary figures such as Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor, and current collective projects with forward thinking peers like Mary Halvorson and Tomas Fujiwara, Bynum increasingly travels the globe to conduct community-based large ensembles in explorations of new creative orchestra music. He is also a published author and contributor to The New Yorker’s Culture Blog, has taught at universities, festivals, and workshops worldwide, and has served as a panelist and consultant for leading funders, arts organizations, and individual artists. His work has received support from Creative Capital, the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Chamber Music America, New Music USA, USArtists International, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.