Articles

Steven Bernstein, Michael Brecker and the Art of Jazz-Hacking the Pop world - Part 1

by Ludovico Granvassu
September 19, 2020

This week we focus on Steven Bernstein and Michael Brecker, the quintessential jazz-hackers of the pop world. If you heard a compelling saxophone solo on a high-end pop or rock production, especially between the 1970s and 1990s, you could bet it was by Michael Brecker, who over the years has appeared on almost 1000 albums. Likewise, if you have been struck by an elegant yet quirky arrangement on a high-end pop or rock album from the past two ...

Avant-Retro or Retro-Avant? Part I

by Ludovico Granvassu
February 29, 2020

Rigid categories are not what music should be about. This week we focus on music that some may file under “retro" but is performed by musicians that are often labelled “avant," it may not sound exactly how Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 or Fess Williams and the Royal Flush Orchestra would have played, but hey... it's 2020 and it debunks the notion that musicians that may like it skronky don't know how to swing. Case in point: Steven ...

Steven Bernstein, Peter Apfelbaum and Will Bernard: From the East Bay to the Avant Garde

by Leo Sidran
January 20, 2020

Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: MTO Plays Sly

by Chris May
September 15, 2011

Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory OrchestraMTO Plays SlyThe Royal Potato Family2011 The Sly Stone songbook is a solid gold thing, and it is strange that it is so rarely revisited. Then again, repertory tributes are generally paid to artists who have passed. Stone is still with us, although, it sometimes seems, only just: over the last few decades, he has been ravaged by “personal problems" which would likely have finished off any ...

Sex Mob: Sexmob Meets Medeski live in Willisau 2006

by Brandt Reiter
November 9, 2009

How best to describe slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein's singular quartet Sex Mob? Maybe we should start with mercurial musical magician Bernstein himself, whose exotic career as sideman, musical director, arranger and composer has included ten years with John Lurie's Lounge Lizards and stints alongside everyone from Bill Frisell to Sam Rivers, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and, oh yes, Bootsy Collins. Or maybe we should look at his career as bandleader, which includes the trumpet-slide guitar-tuba trio Spanish Fly and the ...

Steven Bernstein / Marcus Rojas / Kresten Osgood: Tattoos and Mushrooms

by Chris Mosey
June 13, 2009

The line-up of slide trumpet, tuba and drums is, to say the least, somewhat unusual in jazz. As is the choice of Hank Williams' “So Lonesome I Could Cry" as a vehicle for improvisation. On Tattoos and Mushrooms, trumpeter Steven Bernstein, tubaist Marcus Rojas and drummer Kresten Osgood go boldly into aural regions where no man has gone before. To put it another way, this is not what Count Basie called “music to pat your foot to." ...

Millenial Territory Orchestra: We Are MTO

by Tom Greenland
January 22, 2009

The Millennial Territory Orchestra, the lovechild of leader/arranger/slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein, is back with its sophomore release, We Are MTO, a typically boisterous romp through middle-Americana. Starring the same dramatis personae as its debut, the band is an unwieldy cast of character actors, strong individualists all capable of stealing the scene on any given song. Inspired by his researches for the film Kansas City, Bernstein continues to foment and signify on the sound of early '20s jazz ...