Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Craig Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over twenty-five years

Taborn’s recordings as a leader or co-leader include Daylight Ghosts (2017), Highsmith (2017), Compass Confusion (2020), and a conceptual web-based sound installation entitled 60xSixty (2021). He has also appeared as a sideman on more than 200 recordings and regularly performs at venues and music festivals throughout Europe and the United States.

Craig Taborn is an improvising musician and composer creating singular soundscapes through a virtuosic command of piano and expansive knowledge of musical genres. In performances and recordings as a soloist, bandleader, and sideman, Taborn brings a fearless and sophisticated approach to music making. He draws from musical traditions as varied as traditional and contemporary jazz, contemporary classical, experimental, electronic, rock, metal, and hip-hop. His constant exploration of genre and style informs his own distinct musical intelligence and voice.

With a precise touch and keen sensitivity to an instrument’s capabilities, Taborn elicits distinct textures from the piano and electronic keyboard. He also exploits the percussive qualities of the instruments themselves, and under his hands the piano can sound paper thin, digitally distorted, or as sonorous as a adouble bass. Taborn’s first solo piano album, Avenging Angel (2011), resonates with haunting and complex patterns that draw on experimental jazz and classical Western and Eastern music He explores the piano’s full range, melodically, sonically, and spatially.

In his compositions for solo piano and ensembles, Taborn leaves space for improvisation within a focused compositional logic. He creates modular structures that players can move between and combine in a variety of ways while maintaining the compositional integrity of the piece. On Chants (2013), for his trio of piano, bass, and drum, the instrumentalists layer contrasting parts over one another, but the individual units remain distinct.

More recently, Taborn presents a fully improvised, live performance on the recordingShadow Plays (2021). In long episodic suites, he juxtaposes skittering trills, flowing melodies, and sustained distinctive textures to create a sense of tension and intrigue that demands rapt attention. Taborn and collaborators infuse classical idioms with jazz improvisation on the 2023 albumhEARoes, featuring Taborn in a trio with viola and double bass. A rare artist of unusual depth and originality, Taborn enhances musical collaborations and composition through his expansive exploration of sound, technique, and instrumentation.

Taborn is currently occupied creating and performing music for solo piano performance (Avenging Angel), 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 as well as piano duo collaborations with Vijay Iyer (The Transitory Poems), Kris Davis (Octopus) and Cory Smythe. He is also 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 available worldwide, for free at 60xSixty.com