A significant autumn release highlight on the avant garde horizon is a substantial four-album set release of cornetist composer Taylor Ho Bynum’s Navigation (The Complete Firehouse 12 Recordings).

The composition‘Navigation’ appears on the set in four versions, two of which were performed live in December last year by his sextet and two in the studio as a “7-tette” (with drummer/vibes player Chad Taylor added).

The music was recorded over two days in December last year. The live recordings will be issued this November as a limited edition double vinyl, and the studio recordings on CD and the Navigation recordings are also to be made available as downloads. Bynum says in a statement: “I want to ask listeners to consider the composition as a set of possibilities rather than a fixed document, to encourage them to enjoy the mutable nature of the music in multiple realizations rather than focusing on one particular performance.”

The sextet, Bynum with alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs, bass trombonist/tubaist Bill Lowe, guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Ken Filiano, and drummer/vibes player Tomas Fujiwara, began in 2005 and Navigation, to be issued on the Firehouse 12 label, is its fourth recording although the personnel has changed over the years following on from The Middle Picture, Asphalt Flowers Forking Paths, and Apparent Distance most recently two years ago.

photo Nick Lloyd