Jazz critic, Kevin Whitehead, says Taborn is one of the most inventive and resourceful pianists in improvised music today. “Taborn practices the art of instant composing, of making spontaneous pieces so clear and shapely, they can sound worked out in advance. Sometimes they unfold like traditional pop songs with short motifs and variations.,” he said.
Born in Minneapolis, and raised in Golden Valley, where he attended Breck School, Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scene for over twenty-five years. He has experience composing for and performing in a wide variety of situations including jazz, new music, electronic, rock, noise and avant garde contexts.
Taborn has played and recorded with many luminaries in the fields of jazz, improvised, new music and electronic music including Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Lester Bowie, Dave Holland, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Steve Coleman, David Torn, Chris Potter, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Kris Davis, Nicole Mitchell, Susie Ibarra, Ikue Mori, Carl Craig, Dave Douglas, Meat Beat Manifesto, Dan Weiss, Chris Lightcap, Gerald Cleaver, and Rudresh Manhathappa.
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 now available worldwide, for free at 60xSixty.com
Taborn currently resides in Brooklyn.