Jazz Articles about Tim Berne

Tim Berne: Insomnia

by Troy Collins
March 24, 2011

Recorded in the summer of 1997, the previously unreleased Insomnia offers an expanded variation of composer/saxophonist Tim Berne's critically lauded 1990s quartet, Bloodcount. The group, which featured Berne (on alto and baritone saxophones), tenor saxophonist/clarinetist Chris Speed, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Jim Black, was widely revered for its ability to fashion dramatic opuses that seamlessly integrated abstracted mutant funk vamps with extended episodes of spectral introspection. Bolstered with a mixed quartet of notable string and brass players, the augmented ...

Tim Berne: Insomnia

by Charles Walker
February 7, 2011

Tim BerneInsomniaClean Feed2011 In the medical world, a blood count is a clinical tool, a method of aggregating data in order to make a diagnosis. In short, it's a way of picturing the lay of the land and from there determining the best path forward. Alto saxophonist Tim Berne's Bloodcount--Berne, multi-reedist Chris Speed, bassist Michael Formanek, drummer Jim Black and sometimes guitarist Marc Ducret--spent much of the mid to late 1990s doing ...

Michael Formanek: The Rub and Spare Change

by AAJ Italy Staff
December 13, 2010

Che Ecm, la storica etichetta bavarese di Manfred Eicher, stia tornando ad occuparsi anche di jazz avventuroso e creativo ? Parrebbe proprio di sì a giudicare dalla pubblicazione di The Rube and The Spare Change ultima fatica discografica a proprio nome di Michael Formanek, dodici anni dopo Am I Bothering You (Screwgun 1998). E che uscita! Non si può dire che i quattro non si conoscano perfettamente - a vario titolo e in varie combinazione è da più di un ...

Tim Berne: The Subliminal Explorations of a Creative Mind

by Lloyd N. Peterson Jr.
August 5, 2009

Fascinated by unconventional and complex ideas, saxophonist and composer Tim Berne has become a creative force, exploring all the possibilities in sound through his fearless and brilliant imagination. Lloyd Peterson: You didn't start playing the sax until you were about twenty. That would take quite a bit of confidence.Tim Berne: I didn't really think about it. In some ways, the more I played the more secure I became. But at the beginning, it was almost easier ...

Tim Berne's Bloodcount: Seconds

by Sean Patrick Fitzell
February 9, 2008

Nearly ten years after their last performance, saxophonist Tim Berne has resuscitated archival recordings of his influential group Bloodcount. The three-disc Seconds includes two concerts from 1997 and a documentary DVD from 1994. Hardly leftovers, the package boasts previously unavailable original compositions and the type of bristling performances that forged the band's reputation. With songs rarely shorter than eleven minutes and several stretching to fifty, Bloodcount was a vehicle for Berne's extended compositions. The labyrinthine pieces tack ...

Tim Berne's Bloodcount: Seconds

by John Kelman
October 31, 2007

Tim Berne's Bloodcount Seconds Screwgun Records 2007

While documentation of saxophonist/composer Tim Berne's remarkable Bloodcount has been most widely available on Lowlife, Poisoned Minds and Memory Select--all culled from four nights in Paris in 1994, released that year on JMT and ultimately reissued in remastered form by Winter & Winter--the intrepid Berne did regroup the band subsequently, releasing live recordings from 1996 and 1997 tours of Europe and the United ...

Tim Berne: Mind Over Friction

by Celeste Sunderland
July 5, 2007

Alto saxophonist Tim Berne likes to make a small group sound big. “I like the intimacy and the fact that everybody's really involved all the time. Mind Over Friction, a reissue of a live album of his band Science Friction, recorded in Switzerland in 2003, features lengthy passages where Marc Ducret's electric guitar and Tom Rainey's drums bludgeon each other into wild frenetics before the entire group, including Berne and Craig Taborn on keyboards, returns to a theme ...