In the Pavilion, in a beautiful, dreamlike glow, we listened to two intriguing solo performances. First, violist Benedict Taylor from London played a truly virtuoso improvisation, full of drama, but also conceptual silence and constructive abandonment. ” - Spontaneous Music Tribune

Spontaneous Music Tribune

The moment Benedict Taylor and his viola took to the stage (no band, no sheet music, no technology) there was a pronounced sense of anticipation. Wrapped lovingly around his viola, he delivered a set of unrelenting improvised music. It was impressive not only for its virtuosity and variety, but for Taylor’s sheer ability to retain both his audience’s keen attention and a musical structure for half an hour.” - Kate Romano

The Cusp Magazine

"Virtuoso contemporary violist Benedict Taylor" 

Collaboration with composer Slavko Zagorac

"A constantly inventive sound picture" / "intensely intelligent" / aiming for a Total Music of the viola; a broadcasting of it's every possibility"  

Benedict Taylor solo viola 'Transit Check' (CRAM) 

Review: Ears for Eyes

Charuest and Taylor, generously, provide an ideal metaphor for their work: a series of titles taken from arcane knots used by fishermen, sailors and craftsmen for centuries, thereby highlighting both the practice and goal of their special idiom. Each is a virtuoso of extended as well as conventional techniques, each an explorer of sonority, attacks and decays – to the extent that their sounds, like their pitch ranges, intersect.” - Stuart Broomer

The Whole Note

"astonishing range" / "gorgeous melodic playing" / "a great album to give you shame that you're not practicing enough" 

Solo double album "A Purposeless Play" (subverten) 

Review: FREQ 

"Benedict Taylor on viola, exploited the extreme contrast between his instruments usual sonorous tone, and his whispering harmonics and grainy, grating below-the-bridge bow strokes."  

 

Benedict Taylor with Evan Parker and ensemble at Kings Place  

 

Review: The Arts Desk

"Instantly reactive playing is here allied with an often punk-like flippancy" / "Taylor again evinces the total control of his art" / Striations is a lesson in how to make constantly mutative and engagingly direct short-form improvisations" 

Solo viola album "Striations" (subverten) 

Review: Eyes for Ears 

"Fresh from the Mopomoso express, we are delighted to welcome back Mr Taylor to our humble musical abode to transfix us with his virtuoso viola vignettes." 

Benedict Taylor Solo viola 

Scaledown London

No less than a hundred layers of viola and violin and one of guitar, written or improvised by Benedict Taylor, a specialist in the viola "violin" and one of the essential pillars of the British improvised scene. 

What can be said when listening to this comprovisational UFO, an extraordinary collage of stacked, intertwined, tiled sequences, in an astonishing tonal gradient where a skilfully calculated gaps between each note played and extended to a good part of these sonic undulations of violins creates a fascinating illusion of downward / upward cross movement. 

Minimalism, drones, micro-tonality, the definitions get lost… Over the course of the four parts of this monolithic work, we see it differentiate itself in different branches like in the delta of a river. Each of its arms is carried out in a sinuous or linear course, contrary movements take shape, variations of densities, colorings spread out and the flow slows down, the highs fuse and organic counterpoints intervene. 

Extremes cohabit, a tutti branches out, spreads out and implodes. A Benedictine work of modern times, one would be tempted to say, while the triadic monster rears its sulphurous head. A sparkling, haunted and unique work.

Solo Album: Swarm

Review: Oryx Improv and Sounds