Craig Taborn

Craig Taborn
Taborn at the Moers Festival, 2012
Background information
Birth name	Craig Marvin Taborn
Born	(1970-02-20) February 20, 1970 (age 47) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Genres	Jazz
Occupation(s)	Musician, composer
Instruments	Piano, keyboards, organ, electronics
Years active	Late 1980s–present
Labels	DIW, Thirsty Ear, ECM
Website	Taborn "doesn't have, or want, his own website"

Craig Marvin Taborn (/ˈteɪˌbɔːrn/; born February 20, 1970) is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.

While at university, Taborn toured and recorded with jazz saxophonist James Carter. Taborn went on to play with numerous other musicians in electronic and acoustic settings, while also building a reputation as a solo pianist. He has a range of styles, and often adapts his playing to the nature of the instrument and the sounds that he can make it produce. His improvising, particularly for solo piano, often adopts a modular approach, in which he begins with small units of melody and rhythm and then develops them into larger forms and structures.

In 2011, Down Beat magazine chose Taborn as winner of the electric keyboard category, as well as rising star in both the piano and organ categories. By early 2017, Taborn had released seven albums under his own name and appeared on more than ninety as a sideman.

Taborn was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to John, a psychologist, and Marjorie, a social worker. He grew up in Golden Valley, Minnesota, where he attended Breck School. His parents gave him a Moog synthesizer as a present when he was 12, which was also around the time when he started playing piano. He borrowed records from a public library and listened to public radio, discovering music from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and Sun Ra, among others. As a youth he also listened to heavy metal and contemporary classical music, and identified commonalities among these disparate forms of music.