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Tim Berne: Mind Over Friction
by Celeste Sunderland
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 ...
Continue ReadingBig Satan: Livein Cognito
by John Kelman
Some bands are best experienced live. There's simply no denying the energy and element of surprise that occurs when playing in front of an audience. In recent years, advances in technology and a corresponding reduction in costs have closed the gap between studio and concert recordings to the point where an increasing number of artists now favor live recordings--some, like pianist Keith Jarrett, exclusively so. Livein Cognito isn't Big Satan's first live recording, but given that this trio has convened ...
Continue ReadingTim Berne's Bloodcount: Memory Select (The Paris Concert III)
by AAJ Italy Staff
Formatosi nel 1993, Bloodcount è una delle espressioni più significative del complesso mondo musicale di Tim Berne, oltre a confermarsi il gruppo nel quale il sassofonista di Syracuse riesce ad esprimere più compiutamente il proprio originalissimo credo compositivo e improvvisativo. Al tempo della registrazione dei concerti di Parigi avvenuta nel settembre del 1995 la band aveva raggiunto un grado di affiatamento e di empatia straordinari, in grado di assorbire in maniera del tutto naturale e stimolante la chitarra elettrica di ...
Continue ReadingTim Berne: Superstitious Pragmatist
by Paul Olson
Alto saxophonist/composer Tim Berne's been an enormous presence in improvised music for over twenty-five years. Although he didn't pick up the alto until he was nineteen years old, he had moved to New York City and begun lessons with his great mentor Julius Hemphill by the time he was 20, in 1974. Berne's been notable for his do-it-yourself spirit and his decidedly untimid willingness to get out there and play: he was performing as a leader and releasing records like ...
Continue ReadingTim Berne's Bloodcount: Memory Select - The Paris Concert III
by John Kelman
Tim Berne's September, 1994 Paris performances with Bloodcount clearly represent a career high point. Not one, not two, but three recordings from these shows were originally released in 1995 on the JMT label, and they have finally been reissued in remastered form on Winter & Winter this year. Memory Select - The Paris Concert III also bears the distinction of being the final release in the JMT reissue series, demonstrating the kind of fearlessly uncompromising aesthetic that has made JMT's ...
Continue ReadingTim Berne: Hardcell Live
by Ty Cumbie
Here are some jazz musicians who get it and get it all. That is meant in both senses: as in being hip to all the freshest angles in the current state of the music, and as in not messing around. Track one of Hardcell Live establishes this immediately. The complex, edgy theme is attacked with gusto and precision. The chart is then abandoned and a strong free interlude follows. Already, the musicians have nearly convinced you that they are right ...
Continue ReadingBig Satan: Souls Saved Hear
by Rex Butters
The return of Big Satan finds alto saxophonist Tim Berne, guitarist Marc Ducret, and drummer Tom Rainey playing the edgy, astonishing music associated with the reedman's recent outings. Despite Ducret's easy access to loud and rough hues, his work with Berne drains the denseness lodged in Berne's recent Science Friction , more fully revealing the convoluted structures underpinning the compositions. While Ducret and Berne compete as scene stealers, Rainey's busy omni-beat technique fills the spaces while comfortably supporting the melodicists' ...
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