Craig
Taborn
He // Him // His
[ID: A portrait of a man standing in front of a cement wall with grey paint peeling off the surface. The man looks directly at the viewer, with his hands clasped behind his back. He has curly blonde hair and brown eyes. He wears a blue button-down shirt and denim jeans.]
Brooklyn, NY
2022 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
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Born in Minneapolis, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over twenty-five years. He has experience composing for and performing in a wide variety of situations, including jazz, new music, electronic, rock, noise, and avant-garde contexts.
He has played and recorded with many luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised, new music, and electronic music, including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Lester Bowie, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Chris Potter, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, Susie Ibarra, Ikue Mori, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, Dan Weiss, Chris Lightcap, Gerald Cleaver, and Rudresh Mahanthappa.
He is currently occupied creating and performing music for solo piano performance (Avenging Angel and the newly released Shadow Plays), piano trio (Craig Taborn Trio), an electronic project (Junk Magic), the Daylight Ghosts quartet, a piano/drums/electronics duo with Dave King (Heroic Enthusiasts), and a new trio with Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith; he has also done piano duo collaborations with Vijay Iyer (The Transitory Poems), Kris Davis (Octopus), and Cory Smythe. In addition, he makes music as a member of the instrumental electronic art-pop group Golden Valley Is Now and performs frequently on solo electronics.
His conceptual work 60 x Sixty is now available for free worldwide at 60xSixty.com. Taborn lives in Brooklyn.
Portrait photo by Bill Douthart.