A hot one - composer, cornet/flugelhorn player and former Anthony Braxton student Taylor Ho Bynum is part of the line-up of this exceptional quartet. His opening 'Miscellaneous' pulls you in with a hair raising, strangulated wheeze from his instrument that sounds as if he is screaming 'WOWWWW!!!' through the mouthpiece, bringing to mind the early work of the great Bill Dixon. Meanwhile the rest of The Convergence Quartet put their collective shoulders to the free compositional wheel and give it a massive shove over the edge. Piano player Alexander Hawkins weaves a lush tapestry of disembodied notes over drummer Harris Eisenstadt and bass player Dominic Lah's rhythmic surge, while Bynum's cornet operatically barks in the background. Beautifully timed and perfectly paced, the pristine recording captures their ability to balance memorable thematic modern jazz interludes with all-out free jazz squall. Wow!

Edwin Pouncey, The Wire


Live in Oxford is the work of four young players – cornettist Taylor Ho Bynum, pianist Alex Hawkins, bassist Dom Lash and Toronto’s own Harris Eisenstadt on the drums – who are exploring what the jazz tradition might still mean, a century after the music’s birth. Many players tackle this dilemma by translating their sense of information-overload and belatedness into pastiche and hyper-collage; the Convergence Quartet, though, keep their music lean and purposeful, as if to boil overfamiliar styles down to their core principles and energies. Despite the group’s small size and penchant for free improvisation, there’s a surprisingly Ellingtonian flavour here, a similar sense of the enormous resources of colour and personality available within the ensemble; certainly there’s no mistaking the kinship between Bynum’s growls and droll lyricism and the jazz surrealism of Rex Stewart and Tricky Sam Nanton. Not an easy album to get a grip on, by any means, but it poses more questions about the future of jazz (and finds more viable answers) than many flashier releases from the past year.

Nate Dorward, Exclaim


The Convergence Quartet consists of two North Americans (cornet and flugelhornist Taylor Ho Bynum and drummer Harris Eisenstadt) and two Brits (Alexander Hawkins on piano and small instruments and bassist Dominic Lash). The musicians seem to be taking the band name seriously, as the music is clearly informed by the intersections of methodologies; even though the pieces are shaped by free improvisation, each of the five tracks credits a single composer.
The first piece, Bynum’s “Miscellaneous,” nicely recapitulates the textural history of jazz, whether it wants to or not, beginning with the cornetist’s fine averaging of Bubber Miley and Tricky Sam Nanton with the big beat, Sonny Greer-style orchestral drumming of Eisenstadt. Before the theme is recapitulated, Hawkins’ solo has some of the animation of Cecil Taylor: it’s a short and circular history. Lash’s “Goad” is then the sonic inverse, initially a collection of wisps and stutters that maintains that level until a piano solo creates strong linear continuity and animation, triggering a rhythmic figure from the cornet that might be a composed bridge to another passage of improvisation, dynamic sostenuto piano scurry leading to a final angular trumpet part consisting of sturdy and pointed blasts. A bass solo introduces Eisenstadt’s “Convergence,” gradually gaining in rhythmic specificity to introduce something that Henry Mancini would recognize as a theme, with bass and drums working in close tandem. While Hawkins gradually takes it out with Tippett-ing flurries, segments might be described as “in the pocket,” by those who actually use that phrase. There’s a wonderful moment here in which Bynum plays call and response with himself at the same time that he’s interacting closely with Eisenstadt. Hawkins’ “Goodbye, Sir” is more obscure in its underpinnings, beginning with sound-play solos from Bynum and Eisenstadt before thematic materials emerge with a group passage that leads to free (jazz) improvisation that’s a highlight of the performance. The final and brief Bynum piece, “mm(pf),” reasserts a pattern here, strong tonal agreement arising out of apparently random activity.
What this music means in relationship to how it’s assembled will be determined in each individual listening, but its ambiguities of construction form a particular invitation to inquire into the time and manner of its making. One of its characteristic gestures is a movement from improvisation to pre-structured material, thus structuring material in advance of our hearing, changing our temporal relationship to its construction while suggesting a fundamental reassertion of composition within improvised music. It also thematizes the idea of free improvisation as a prelude to something else that has already conditioned it, turning improvisation into something the music is about rather than a method of making it. The liner essay by Simon H. Fell is a useful inquiry into the issues posed by this music. For anyone interested in pursuing this work, Fell’s note is also available as a PDF file on the record company site: www.fmr-records.com.

Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure


Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, flugelhorn), Harris Eisenstadt (drums), Alexander Hawkins (piano, small instruments) and Dominic Lash (double bass) are the members of The Convergence Quartet, a not-too-friendly unit whose means of expression is a mixture of linearity and complexity applied in equal doses over the course of five tracks, each one curiously penned by a lone component but not revelatory of its composer’s primary instrument’s influence. The large part of the album sounds like pure improvisation, though, with just a modicum of pretty minimal themes to which the players return after the most difficult unpremeditated sections. A Mark Isham-like trumpet draws horizontal lines of calmness amidst Cecil Taylor-ish spurts in “Convergence”, only to start babbling and clamouring while riding a muscular vamp by Lash, while Eisenstadt, the author of this particular piece, accompanies and underlines with masterful sensitiveness, at times coming to the front in the mix with rare outbursts. Hawkins’ “Goodbye, Sir” is very variegated, fractured in a way, lots of quasi-silences interrupted either by complex interplay or introvert explorations by a single instrument; think “XX-Century dissonant marching band, power switched alternatively on and off”, with additional pinches of solo follies to render the music even more unbalanced. The live recording captures the group as a resonating, often booming whole, the instruments exploiting the natural reverberation of Oxford’s Jacqueline Du Pré Music Building to represent a collective picture where details are to be intuited and guessed rather than individuated. The dynamic contrasts always remain within the borders of acceptability also for less expert ears, transforming the experience in an exercise in attentive listening that needs concentration to give out its secrets.

Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes


The Convergence Quartet at the Jacqueline Du Pre Music Building were playing the final gig in a nationwide tour. It was fitting that they should end up here, as bass player Dominic Lash and pianist Alexander Hawkins are both based in Oxford and it is through Lash's involvement with Oxford Improvisers that this co-operation with two remarkable musicians, Canadian drummer Harris Eisenstadt and American trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, was made possible. These are both players that bring great control and sensitivity to free improvisation, an area of jazz often criticised for its waywardness and apparent disorganisation.
There had obviously been some fairly rigorous rehearsal time as all the pieces were writen by members of the quartet and everyone was referring to a score of some kind. The arrangements gave each player a degree of space and the group was often working in duo or trio form. This allowed us to fully appreciate the range of colour and diversity in the music and to hear clearly the more subtle moments, particularly from Ho Bynum's muted trumpet and Lash's intricacies on the bass. Eisenstadt's drumming was extraordinarily controlled and colourful, including his more extreme uses of the kit. Alex Hawkins, with a fierce technique, showed an awareness that a torrent of notes is not always needed. This was a performance of great diversity and skill that showed what a diverse world free improvisation can inhabit.

Paul Medley, Oxford Times


American cornettist/flugelhorn player Taylor Ho Bynum, Canadian drummer Harris Eisenstadt, UK pianist Alex Hawkins and Oxford Improvisers' bassist Dominic Lash...operate in the fertile hinterland between structure (they hint at rhythmically regular playing via the use of sketchy 'heads', and concluded their first set with a Monk tune) and free improvisation.
Eisenstadt, like, say, Jim Black or Tom Rainey, proved as adept at providing relatively heavy, almost rock-type beats as in skittering and shiffling behind free playing.
Hawkins (who provided stage commentary as well as compositions) operated inside the piano as tellingly as on the keyboard (where he exploits the percussive potential of the instrument to great effect as well as playing dazzlingly fleet runs punctuated by high-note splashes and bass-note rumbles).
Lash held the band sound together with his steadiness, occasionally erupting into blistering solo statements. Ho Bynum ran through the entire range of his instruments' tonal possibilities, using smears, lip-smacks, high-note squeals, plus the odd run to spearhead a band approach that clearly riveted the attention of a decent-sized audience.

Chris Parker, www.vortexjazz.co.uk


Collaborations between British and American musicians have a long history, but if the format of the Convergence Quartet promised nothing out of the ordinary, the same could not be said of the content. But more of that later. Two rising stars on the North American scene in trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum - best known for his prominent role in master musician Anthony Braxton's recent oeuvre - and increasingly visible Canadian percussionist Harris Eisenstadt joined with two young Oxford-based musicians, bassist Dominic Lash and pianist Alexander Hawkins. The genesis of the idea stemmed from a previous visit by Eisenstadt and a desire on the part of the British duo to work with Bynum following his knockout contribution to Braxton's triumph at the Royal Festival Hall in 2004. When the money became available, flights were booked and arrangements made for a short tour. I caught them on 6 November at Cambridge in the Bateman Auditorium (an intimate performance space with good acoustics negating the need for amplification) in Gonville and Caius College. An unforunate combination of drunken violence and the ailing British railway system conspired to delay my journey, so I arrived just into the second piece of the evening.
After a swingingly lyrical theme the piece broke down into a series of catch-me-if-you-can duets, first an exhibition of extended technique between Lash and Bynum's trumpet, then a spiky piano/drums pairing. What could be termed "European" free improvisation (though such non-idiomatic improv has increasingly taken root in North America too), blended intriguingly with jazzier extemporization, aided by compositional devices from the pens of all four. Each proved adept at moving smoothly between deifferent camps in an unforced manner, although the compositional elements could be difficult to discern, which is how I like it, as in Lash's piece "Goad," combining musical notation with sometimes obscure written instruction.
The centrepiece of the performance was Eisenstadt's "Convergence," which began with a wonderful Hawkins piano introduction. Delicate plink-plonk dissonance morphed into swirling tendrils of sound before settling into a rumbling riff, echoed first by the bass and then with jazzy propulsion by the drums. Bynum laid out the gorgeous theme over the top, then took a fine flugelhorn solo, at first melodic but then fragmenting into abstract gesture. Bynum is at the forefront of a new generation of creative trumpeters, along with the likes of Nate Wooley and Peter Evans (to name two who have impressed over the last couple of years), who are taking the instrument to another level. He boasts an astonishing timbral range, incorporating whistles, buzzes, vocalised yelps, and drones into a highly personal expressiveness, supplemented by imaginative use of mutes. In one sequence he combined a circular breathed line with vocalised mulltiphonics to jaw-dropping effect.
Lash mixed an imaginative range of technique with jazz chops, seeming comfortable whether scratching and scrabbling with his bow, or anchoring the flow with ostinato patterns. The same was true of all four, with Hawkins as happy delving inside the piano as pounding the keys.
Eisenstadt projected calmness, almost seeming to float above his kit, as he moved between pulse and commentary, sometimes modifying his sound with his elbows, or with sheets and blanket draped over various parts of the kit for textural variation.
So what was new about this collaboration? Well to my mind it was part of an increasing tendency to look at free improvisation, not as an alternative to jazz, but as yet another idiom to be incorporated alongside more traditional elements in a no-holds-barred approach toward playing music grounded in the original seminal free spirit of jazz. The group touched on some very exciting territory, and I hope they continue to meet, developing the cross-cultural fertilization even further. Like others on the tour, this gig was recorded, and I look forward to any forthcoming memento from this collaboration.

John Sharpe, www.allaboutjazz.com


Simon H. Fell says in the liner notes that he has no idea how this quartet got together and just wrote the notes based on his hearing the disc only. I recall Taylor telling me that the two young British gents here, got some sort of grant funds and asked Taylor and Harris to join them in the UK to work together. Anyone in the know, is well aware of the young master, Taylor Ho Bynum, from his recent collaborations with Anthony Braxton, as well as a handful of his own discs. Since moving back from L.A., where he worked with Adam Rudolph, Sam Rivers & Vinny Golia, Harris Eisenstadt has become another of those fine local percussionists who has turned up in many different projects over the past few years and has a half dozen fine discs of his own. I can't say that I had heard of the other two players before this, but I am greatly impressed. Each musician contributes a piece, while Taylor gets one long and one short one. Taylor's "Miscellaneous" opens with a fine drum solo, soon the bass, cornet and piano enter. The rhythm is like twisted funk with Taylor adding odd smears against the groove. The next section features cornet fragments, bowed bass scrapes, restrained free percussion and piano eruptions. It ends with a similar closing theme to the beginning. Dominic's "Goad" has Taylor bending his notes slowly in the distance and then the rest of the quartet enters in swirling waves. A series of intricate duos and trios take place, as the musicians exchange roles and ideas. Harris' "Convergence" opens with a haunting bass solo, a great theme unfolds with an unforgettable melody played by the flugel and piano over a
grand throbbing bass line and hypnotic percussion groove. The theme reminds me of one of those wonderful South African songs and Alexander takes an appropriate Keith Tippett-like rambunctious, free piano solo. Alexander's "Goodbye, Sir" is next and begins freely and sparsely with Taylor's free-wheeling cornet insanity while Alex plays soft eerie sounds inside the piano. The piece gets more and more spare, until midway point when it slowly erupts with some restrained yet intense free piano and percussion. Taylor's "mm(pf)" brings things to a close with sparse and haunting sounds that float freely yet seem playfully connected and concludes with a nice melodic themed ending. This is a most interesting disc that evolves through a variety of unexpected directions and will take some time to absorb completely.

Bruce Lee Galanter, Downtown Music Gallery


'The Convergence Quartet make exciting music. Their new live CD brings together a variety of approaches - the well-planned and the unpredictable, the forceful and the intricate,  expressive solos and  cogent group interactions. They come together, play everywhichway - and it's a convergence of riches.'

Graham Lock, Author: Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-Reality of Creative Music (Da Capo)


Recorded at a music building in Oxford, England., this international cast of highly-regarded improvisers use the building’s wonderful acoustics as a vantage point here. Therefore, it’s an organic program that resonates with the musicians’ multifaceted mode of attack. More importantly the program is a study in contrasts. Whether it’s Alexander Hawkins’ pumping or gingerly executed voicings atop asymmetrical pulses or the band’s minimalist like dialogues, this album truly is a convergence of musical ideas.
Featuring five semi-structured pieces that enable the instrumentalists quite a bit of room for expression and expansion, there are parts where Hawkins phrasings seemingly roll off Harris Eisenstadt’s polyrhythmic pulses. Trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum frequently revs it up while also working within budding themes, firmed-up by bassist Dominic Lash. Another component of the artists’ musical architecture pertains to their integration of tangible themes into the improvisational element. And at times, the dialogues elicit thoughts of people scurrying around a room, where the band engages in cat and mouse exchanges. On “Goodbye, Sir,” they purvey a sense of loneliness and isolation but eventually up the ante with heated, interweaving dialogues.
Overall, this is a convincingly solid engagement that highlights the band’s morphing of ambience, finesse, power and intricately devised subtleties. It’s all executed with a sense of purposeful exploration. An excellent outing, indeed…

Glenn Astarita, ejazz news


This band should be familiar to Vortex patrons, having played at the club in November 2006, during the tour that produced this album, recorded live in Oxford.
Their music straddles the border between structure and freedom, moving uncontrivedly from prearranged but relatively sketchy 'heads' (often a mere hint of a melody or a repeated motif) to freely improvised passages skilfully utilising the entire range of sounds and textures, from quiet skittering to full-throttle free-for-alls, available to a band comprising cornet/flugelhorn (Baltimore-born Taylor Ho Bynum, an ex-Braxton student who has played with the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra among others), piano (Alex Hawkins), bass (Dominic Lash) and drums (Harris Eisenstadt, from Toronto).
The telling exploitation of contrast (both stylistic and dynamic) is perhaps the band's greatest collective strength (on this album, 'Convergence' ­ to take a representative piece ­ includes both an insinuating, quietly stated theme and roiling free passages), but individually, too ­ Taylor Ho Bynum incorporating everything from woozy smears to spearing runs into his playing, Alex Hawkins gunning the gamut from splashily percussive to pianissimo, Dominic Lash judiciously balancing steady support with solo excursions, Harris Eisenstadt driving the whole via everything from powerhouse rock-like beats to the subtlest of understatement ­ the band rivet the attention just as successfully on this recording as they did at their Vortex gig.

Chris Parker, www.vortexjazz.co.uk


Recorded live at the Jacqueline du Pré Music Room last year at the end of a national tour by the Convergence Quartet, this album is a perfect example of the richly varied nature of free improvisation. Featuring two players of international standing, American trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum and Canadian drummer Harris Eisenstadt, plus the fast-rising talents of two young local players, Alexander Hawkins on piano and Dominic Lash on bass, this concert contains the variety of skills and approaches that makes jazz taken into the unchartered country of musical freedom so exciting and unpredictable.
Taylor Ho Bynum (pictured), who here plays cornet and flugelhorn, is a musician and composer who works tirelessly as performer and educator. He is very articulate about his music. "People have to realise that they are so busy fetishising the jazz of the past and the historical periods of the past to realise that we are at an incredibly, radical, transitional period . . . I think it is imperative that artists deal with that." The fossilisation of our responses to music including jazz constantly stultifies our response to new ideas, so this album which has the immediacy of a live event is a welcome addition to the growing discography from musicians who wish to respond artistically to the more radical nature of the cultural landscape.
With the shifting tonal quality of Ho Bynum's spare lines arching over the rush and tremble of Eisenstadt's drumming, while Lash boosts and counters on bass and Hawkins introduces floods of highly articulated notes, the music on this album (FMR CD223-0307) is constantly curving and developing in a way that earlier free jazz often failed to do. From moments of almost silence, with Lash teasing the edges of his bass or Bynum lifting single notes into the wonderful acoustic of the JDP, through to full-on duos between Hawkins and Eisenstadt, this is an album full of lightning responses from all the players and moments of magical innovation. Though inevitably best experienced in the moment, this recording perfectly captures the freshness of the event.

Paul Medley, Oxford Times


Between them, these two quartets [sc. CVQ and Barkingside] feature six young players, four from the UK, one from America, one from Canada. As the oldest of the six is not yet 35 years old—and several are much younger—they provide heartening evidence that there are plenty of good young improvisers around and that not all young players aspire to be boppers.
The Convergence Quartet teams pianist Alexander Hawkins and bassist Dominic Lash (both also in Barkingside) with cornetist/flugelhornist Taylor Ho Bynum from Baltimore and drummer Harris Eisenstadt from Toronto. The quartet's music is an unpredictable amalgam of jazz from various eras plus free improvisation; it employs the syntax of jazz but constantly subverts our expectations with interjections of improv.
Opening with a flourish from Eisenstadt, who then lays down a rhythmic base with Lash, “Miscellaneous” seems to be following a well-trodden path, until Bynum joins the fray and things become far more interesting. After some sustained growling notes (straight out of early Ellington, no less) Bynum repeatedly plays a simple four-note theme before launching into a totally free improvised duet with Lash. At the end of this, the simple theme is restated, before Hawkins fires off a rapid-fire fractured solo, supported by thunderous drumming that enhances the drama created by the piano.
The clear message of this opening track is sustained throughout the album: “Expect the unexpected. Don't assume. Don't relax!”
Repeatedly, Bynum is the wild card here, the joker in the pack, the subversive—his contributions keeping everyone on their toes. There is fine playing from all concerned, but Bynum really makes you take notice. His stunning solo on “Convergence” is beautifully constructed, with a clear dramatic curve leading to a great climax; along the way, he even manages a call-and-response dialogue with himself. Remarkable.
Barkingside is a less than salubrious outer London suburb (which, the members of the quartet point out, none of them has ever visited!). It seems to have been chosen less for its location than for its name, in particular its canine connotations, as the three track titles are all names of obscure breeds of dog. Odd.
Despite sharing two of its members, Barkingside sounds very different to The Convergence Quartet, having no hint of its jazz syntax. Rather than focusing on individual contributions, Barkingside, predominantly, all improvise simultaneously, creating a free flowing, ever shifting soundscape. Alex Ward's clarinet is the sound that dominates the group, constantly probing, goading, reacting, making things happen.
At times, Ward almost takes the role of soloist, leading the foursome to some thrilling peaks, but he is never less than fully aware of the others and is ever ready to make an unexpected swerve in reaction to them.
In a similar vein, Hawkins' piano clearly displays free jazz influences, piling up torrents of notes in a display of technique that is breathtaking. However, he never becomes the sole focus of the group and is just as impressive when adding spare, economic punctuations to four-way exchanges.
Altogether, the level of group empathy displayed here is scary given that the musicians had played comparatively few gigs together before these recordings were made. Barkingside have a very bright future.

John Eyles, All About Jazz


As the quartet's name suggests, Bynum, drummer Harris Eisenstadt, pianist Alexander Hawkins, and bassist Dominic Lash together present as a meeting of strong individual voices more than of a high-definition group identity. Each of the five track is bylined by one of the four, with Bynum's signature bookending the others. Everyone's conceptual vision is represented, all have plenty of performance space to make within each vision their statements. One's ear must be attuned to the relationship between compositional gesture and wide-open improvisation to assess the success of the blend. Bynum's such touch is light; he orchestrates and composes sketchily yet thoughtfully enough to stimulate without forcing the improv, or leaving it high (or low) and dry. His opening "miscellaneous" opens the door onto some of his most artful and reaching playing - well recorded for a live performance - which in turn draws out the same quality in the others. Matching it, his ending "mm(pf)" frames the CD with that quality like a couple of very fine artist-calligrapher's etchings, gallery hung. Lash's "goad" is less apparent as a made piece, but arguably more brilliant as an extensive, restrained burn of a performance, stoked well by all. Eisenstadt's "convergence" is the most dramatic and ambitious compositional statement, but one on which the elaborations may not have fully realized its potential (at least on CD; a closer mic on Bynum here might have blunted that complaint). Hawkins' "goodbye, sir" brought "small instruments" to the palette, combining with his pianisms to paint the biggest range of refined subtlety and splashy panache, infecting the others therewith.

Mike Heffley, EarRelevant AlmaTeur