Tim Berne with friends old and new, the +2s on their own, and Mars Williams
The saxophonist with Aurora Nealand and Hank Roberts, recent music from Moreno Veloso and Domenico Lancellotti
Tim Berne’s new chamber music:
For the past six decades Tim Berne has ranked as one of the most indefatigable, uncompromising figures in jazz and improvised music. Beneath his bitingly sarcastic persona and deservedly cynical view of the jazz industry, he literally bursts with creativity and fresh ideas, all while maintaining an instantly recognizable sound. Spending the last five years in Europe has driven home the point that he remains one of the most influential figures on this side of the Atlantic, particularly the music he made with his old quartet Bloodcount, with Chris Speed, Jim Black, and Michael Formanek. But he’s always looking forward, developing new artistic partnerships even as he maintains long-running connections with folks like guitarists Marc Ducret and David Torn and cellist Hank Roberts. He’s formed strong bonds with younger folks, such as drummer Ches Smith, pianist Matt Mitchell, and guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi, but I don’t think there’s been a collaborator that’s offered as many possibilities as Aurora Nealand, a dynamo from New Orleans who should be much better known that she already is. Down in the Crescent City she has built a rigorous, multi-pronged artistic practice, playing traditional jazz with the Royal Roses, forging a musical theater project with Monocle (a solo endeavor that sometimes enlists additional musicians for live performances), participating in a slew of multi-media efforts, and flourishing in improvised music settings, where she plays reeds, accordion, and sings.
Nealand and Berne have been collaborating with increased frequency over the last few years, and they recently shared some of the fruits of their work with an incredible new album entitled Oceans and (Intakt), a trio recording with cellist Roberts—a musician who’s worked with Berne off-and-on since the early 80s. The music is all improvised, and it captures Berne’s always dense aesthetic in fresh ways. This is high caliber chamber music unmoored from any single stylistic foundation. Berne’s endlessly probing alto and Roberts’ grainy arco lines occupy a similar sonic range, a connection forged over many years. The latter tends to be a more measured, more lyric player than the former, but when they’re together it all balances out, with loads of yin-yang push-and-pull. As the relative newcomer Nealand seems to be the element that transforms the group, making it unlike much else out there today.
On the opening piece “The Latter” the harmonized long tones of Berne and Roberts carve out a thick, haunting atmosphere, with Berne’s sinewy alto slowly pulling apart, but it’s Nealand’s sparse accordion swells that quietly tangle up the proceedings, injecting sour harmonies while reinforcing the brooding vibe. Each musician seems to be floating, shifting their location within the mix, with lines that alternately blend and separate. Still, they are seriously locked into a common purpose. When things get more feverish and turbulent, as on “Eez,” where Roberts seems to wedge his bow within his strings to produce vibratory thwacks, Nealand pivots, unleashing harmonically tart accordion chords that appear closer to European new music more than jazz. There’s some wonderful interplay between Roberts and Nealand during the opening 90 seconds of “Low Strung” before Berne slides in, blowing arcing tones that caress and then split open the action, pushing into an upper register cry picked up by Nealand’s elastic singing. On the pensive “Clustard” she picks up her clarinet, braiding thrilling lines with Berne as the cellist holds bows a grainy low-end presence—check it out below.
I tend to be skeptical of singing in free improv situations, but here I relish the fleeting moments when Nealand applies her voice. She adds some lovely upper register singing on “Mortal and Pestered,” first threading the low-end patterns Roberts taps out before she begins to duet with her own accordion lines, as Berne works over a handful of phrases for every possible permutation. Even more powerful is her wordless singing on “Fess,” where she conjures some unholy castrati-Yma Sumac opera-folk hybrid, an ethereal invitation to a barren landscape constructed of high-pitched squiggles and low-end rumble. It’s totally captivating—I just wish there was more of it. Nealand seems to exist outside of any given aesthetic tradition, and that allows her to bring in unexpected ideas and directions, but her improvisational center is rock solid. Apparently she’s going to be decamping to Berlin for the month of August, and I can’t wait to see what contexts she arises within (already she’s been announced to play Cologne Jazz Week on August, playing with trombonist Shannon Barnett’s Quartet on the 12th and presenting a solo iteration of Monocle on the 13th).
The +2s carry on across the globe:
Over the last couple of decades some of the greatest Brazilian music has been made by three old pals from Rio de Janeiro: Moreno Veloso, (Alexandre) Kassin, and Domenico Lancellotti. I first heard them with the release of Music Typewriter in 2001, an album billed to Moreno +2. Each member of the trio went on to make albums featuring their own songs and singing, with the others providing elastic, imaginative instrumental support. Each musician has a distinct personality, but, as with so many Brazilian musicians, they’re all well-versed in native traditions, seamlessly weaving together past, present, and future in beautifully riveting fashion. The trio no longer exists even though the musicians continue to work together here and there.
In late 2021 Moreno, who happens to be the son of Caetano Veloso, released a fantastic solo record that was largely slept on. Despite the fact that it’s been out for a year-and-a-half I can’t think of a good reason to not write about it here. Every Single Night was part of an eight-album series issued by Corbett vs. Dempsey called the Black Cross Solo Sessions, a response to altered musical practices imposed by the pandemic. Most of the titles in the series focused on improvised music, with excellent titles by the likes of Arto Lindsay, Okkyung Lee, and Hamid Drake, among others. Veloso took a different route, recording a batch of tunes that he would routinely sing to his son each night, most of which emerged from South America, whether the sublime Agustin Lara song “Noche de Ronda,” written by his sister Maria Teresa Lara, or “Evaporar,” a gem by Rodrigo Amarante, a founding member of Los Hermanos who’s found success in the US as a solo artist in recent years. Accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar, the collection lets us bask in Moreno’s devastatingly lovely voice, a delicate presence that veers into a falsetto with utter ease, perpetually teasing out subtle melodic variations and building on the close-miked intimacy pioneered by the wispy singing of João Gilberto. Below you can check out his version of “Tigresa,” a song originally featured on his father’s 1977 album Bicho.
Late last month Lancellotti—who’s been part of an exodus of Brazilian musicians to Lisbon, Portugal, relocating in 2019 in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro’s destructive election—released a superb new album called Sramba (Mais Um Discos). He had released a serviceable MPB album called Raio (Banana & Louie) in 2021, but compared to his previous work with the +2s or with Os Ritmistas, it felt quite bland. With Kassin and Moreno still back in Brazil, he found an excellent creative foil for the new record in Ricardo Dias Gomes, a masterful bassist and songwriter who had been a crucial part of the scrappy indie rock trio Caetano Veloso worked with on his essential late career trilogy between 2006-2012, Cê, Zii e Zie, and Abraçaço. They began workshopping together during the winter of 2022, inspired by a collection of vintage Russian synthesizers Gomes has collected. Most of the new album was made by just two of them, with a handful of guests, and while those synths are prominently featured, they are ultimately tools for Lancellotti’s excellent songwriting. Domenico’s father Ivor was a dyed-in-the-wool sambista, and his son clearly absorbed his feel and knowledge for the tradition by osmosis, no matter how experimental he gets—there are a handful of crazy tracks on Domenico’s 2002 debut with the +2s, Sincerely Hot, which push against the style’s strictures to brilliant effect.
The first time I caught the +2s was in support of Moreno’s album, where Domenico bypassed his usual drum kit for an MPC. His performance still defines how the machine can be used in the live setting, as he played it like it with the ease and groove he could generate from standard percussion, but he also employed novel techniques like rubbing together sheets of sandpaper to get the frictive rhythm in so much bossa nova. Domenico and Gomes co-wrote “Diga,” an infectious samba that sashays with a combination of stuttering guitar chords and clanky machine-like percussion, setting a template for much of the album, where antiquity and some broken vision of the future magically align. Check it out, below. They build irresistible vocal harmonies, deploying their voices like another rhythmic device, while simultaneously caressing the tune’s delicate melody, ending the performance with a pile-up of noise and sonic detritus. That quality was most certainly inherited from the early 1970s experiments of OG Tropicalista Tom Zé, who found a way to use power tools in samba music.
As with Zé, Domenico privileges the samba and the song over mere sonic innovation. No matter how far flung anything gets, the arrangements ultimately facilitate pleasure. And this record is all about pleasure. There are three instrumental tracks that allow experimentation to get more of the focus, such as “Um Abraço no Faust,” a nicely thrumming drone built upon an incessant guitar pattern that imitates a berimbau, but there’s still a tender melody lurking alongside the muffled electronic beats and Morricone-worthy accents. The title is a play on the João Gilberto instrumental “Un Abraco no Bonfá,” a tribute to his worthy guitar constituent Luiz, but Domenico and Gomes instead salute Krautrock pioneers Faust. “Tá Brabo” is built around a queasy analog synth melody, slinking through acoustic guitar chords and decidedly primitive, slightly harsh electronic beats.
These are nice departures, but I still like the tunes with singing best. In fact, a ballad like “Nada Será de Outra Maneira,” with piano lines worthy of João Donato by Maycon Ananias and lushly romantic strings credited as “Cordas filarmônica Soviética” (Soviet Philharmonic chords)—which give the performance a truly timeless quality—could have been produced at any time over the last six decades. “Quem Samba” features punchy brass arrangements and a smoky vocal cameo from Márcia Santos, who provides a mentholated contrast to Domenico’s avuncular delivery. After his flirtation with orthodoxy on Raio it’s a relief to hear the singer get back to his aesthetic heart. Gomes—who has his own superb album Muito Sol coming next month from Hive Mind—deserves much of the credit, if only for helping Lancellotti reclaim that sweet spot.
Sad News from Chicago:
This depressing news has been shared pretty widely over the last couple of weeks, but since the GoFundMe campaign started by Dave Rempis is still shy of its goal, I’m giving it another bump here because Mars Williams is a goddamned prince who deserves the best. Last December the seriously energetic, genre-agnostic saxophonist was diagnosed with a rare condition “known as ampullary cancer, in which a tumor develops near the bile duct and pancreas.” Williams has been one of the most enduring and crucial figures on Chicago’s improvised music scene for decades. He was an early sideman with Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble, a perfect foil for that bandleader’s madcap sensibility and go-for-broke attitude, and in the subsequent decades he’s played in countless combos including the Vandermark 5, the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet, Witches and Devils, and Extraordinary Popular Delusions, among others. He’s also maintained long-term connections to rock music, playing in the Waitresses, the Swollen Monkeys, and the Psychedelic Furs (with whom he’s toured for decades).
Apart from his unstoppable musical ferocity, he’s one of the friendliest, most enthusiastic souls I’ve had the pleasure of knowing, sharing his support for fellow musicians through thick and think. He’s a fighter with a tender heart. Please consider making a contribution to the campaign, which is needed to help cover the mounting healthcare costs left unmet by the execrable state of insurance in the US.
Recommended shows in Berlin this week:
May 20: Tashi Wada, Hour of the Star performed by Harmonic Space Orchestra with Julia Holter, 7:30 PM, Emmauskirche, Lausitzer Pl. 8 A, 10997 Berlin (register: https://www.americanacademy.de/event/tashi-wada-hour-of-the-star/)
May 20: Devin Gray Quartet (with Håvard Wiik, Felix Henkelhausen, and Michael Attias), 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustr. 115, 12043 Berlin
May 21: Sawt Out (Burkhard Beins, Mazen Kerbaj, Michael Vorfeld), 3 PM, Satellit, Weinstr.11, 10249 Berlin
May 21: Marcin Masecki plays Bach’s Goldberg Variations, 8 PM, KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28 12043 Berlin
Love some good synchronicity. Just writing up this weekend's Berne-Nealand gig - also with Frisell and Tim Angulo on drums, doing (according to Tim) largely Julius Hemphill tunes. (At Barbes in Bklyn on 5/20). They're also doing a house show with Hank Roberts, so excited to hear that music beforehand. Also: wrote up that fabulous Domenico Lancellotti album as part of my monthly New Music post. Enjoy! https://dadastrain.substack.com/p/new-dada-music_april-2023