New Director Named for Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble

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Taylor Ho Bynum succeeds Don Glasgo, who directed the ensemble for 40 years.

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Taylor Ho Bynum playing trumpet
Taylor Ho Bynum is a cornetist, composer, bandleader, writer, and educator. (Photo courtesy of the Hopkins Center for the Arts)
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Image removed.Taylor Ho Bynum currently leads his group Sextet and 7-tette; and works with many collective ensembles. (Photo by Kelly Jensen)

Read the full blog post by Rebecca Bailey, published by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

Cornetist, composer, bandleader, writer, and educator Taylor Ho Bynum will be the next director of the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble, Dartmouth’s student jazz group.

Bynum, whom Time Out Chicago calls “one of the most exciting figures in jazz’s new power generation,” succeeds Don Glasgo, who retired this spring after directing the ensemble for 40 years. Bynum will begin work July 1.

The Barbary Coast is one of nine ensembles overseen by the Hopkins Center for the Arts. “The search committee did a superb job,” says Mary Lou Aleskie, Howard L. Gilman Director of the Hopkins Center. “We’re so excited to be bringing on board someone who is not only a pioneering jazz improviser, band director and composer but also so grounded in so many facets of the arts. We know Taylor will maintain the forward-looking commitment to jazz that Don has overseen for four decades.”

“I am incredibly excited to work with the talented students of Dartmouth College and the inspiring individuals of the Hopkins Center and Dartmouth artistic community,” Bynum says. “I truly believe that a large group of people improvising together, navigating forms and making choices in real time, can be a transformative thing. The jazz big band has been a model of creative interaction, structural innovation, and American ingenuity for over a century, we have a lot of history to draw on, a lot of new places to go, and a lot of joy to find in this music. I am thrilled to get to explore new and old ideas in this musical tradition with the Barbary Coast!”

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