Hailed by Downbeat magazine for his “adroit lyricism and gift for complex, imaginative composition,” composer, trumpeter, and synthesist Taylor Haskins is a musical artist who has distinguished himself as a leader of groundbreaking ensembles as well as a venturesome composer and producer of soundtracks for film and television.

His most recent albums include the hard-hitting progressive opus Interstellar Phoenix, the plaintive and evocative ambience of Solo Solstice, the jazz-electronica hybrid Gnosis and the disarmingly melodic The Point by a quintet called ‘Green Empire’, which features Haskins exclusively on the rare Steiner-Crumar analog EVI (electronic valve instrument). His five previous releases, dating back to 2003, are Fuzzy Logic (Sunnyside Records), Recombination, American Dream (Sunnyside Records), Metaview, and Wake Up Call (Fresh Sound Records).

Early in his career Taylor was mentored by the great Clark Terry, toured briefly with trumpet hero Maynard Ferguson, and in 2005 he won a Grammy™ award playing lead trumpet with one of his earliest musical inspirations, bassist Dave Holland (on Overtime in 2005). Taylor has also played a vital role in Wilco guitarist Nels Cline’s Lovers orchestra, the Grammy-nominated Alan Ferber Orchestra, Peter Herborn’s ‘Large’, the JC Sanford Orchestra, Joel Harrison +19, the Michael Leonhart Orchestra, and many others. He inspired international audiences for years while touring extensively with the dynamic Richard Bona Group, and has been a member Guillermo Klein’s Los Guachos for over 25 years.

For over 20 years, Taylor has composed and produced music for media of all types. From the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s he worked full time as a composer for the cutting-edge electronic music production house tomandandy™, composing music and sound design for prominent films, national and international commercial campaigns, video games, and art installations. While at tomandandy™ Taylor also helped develop and field-test proprietary music generation software that employs artificial intelligence-based algorithms and was awarded a U.S. patent.

Originally from the woods of New Hampshire, Haskins completed his Masters degree in music at the Manhattan School of Music in 1998, where he studied trumpet with Lew Soloff and composition with David Lalama. He then thrived as an active participant in the demanding New York City music scene for over two decades.

Taylor now resides in the Champlain Valley region of New York’s Adirondack mountains where he works out of his production studio Recombination Labs, hosts a weekly radio program called ‘The Thread’ Saturday evenings on NCPR, and serves as Creative Director of The Mill.