Illegal Crowns at Hope Central Church

One of Mandorla Music's 2019 high points was our September show with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet. It was a beautiful evening of creative music, palpable camaraderie on the bandstand and an enthusiastically engaged crowd, and it came days before longtime sextet member Mary Halvorson was announces as a 2019 MacArthur "genius" grant winner.

It's an honor to welcome Mary, Taylor Ho Bynum and Tomas Fujiwara back to Mandorla Music and back to Hope Central Church, this time with French pianist Benoît Delbecq. Together they are Illegal Crowns, described by Bynum as "a group both old and new, music accessible and experimental, a name revolutionary and royal. Four individuals and one ensemble, in the kind of harmony that needs no resolution."...

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One of Mandorla Music's 2019 high points was our September show with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet. It was a beautiful evening of creative music, palpable camaraderie on the bandstand and an enthusiastically engaged crowd, and it came days before longtime sextet member Mary Halvorson was announces as a 2019 MacArthur "genius" grant winner.

It's an honor to welcome Mary, Taylor Ho Bynum and Tomas Fujiwara back to Mandorla Music and back to Hope Central Church, this time with French pianist Benoît Delbecq. Together they are Illegal Crowns, described by Bynum as "a group both old and new, music accessible and experimental, a name revolutionary and royal. Four individuals and one ensemble, in the kind of harmony that needs no resolution."

Writing for Point of Departure, Ed Hazell observes that the foursome "improvise and interact with relaxed alertness, finely judging time, texture, line, and ensemble density to make music comprised of separate personal voices that cohere into a lively whole. Their every gesture is defined, specific, and placed within the flow of music so it harmonizes with what surrounds it. Sure theres tension and release and dissonance and noise, but theres never a clash or an element out of place.

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