Tim Berne’s Big Satan
Transparent Productions starts its 30th year with alto saxophonist, band leader, and composer Tim Berne and his long-running ensemble, Big Satan, featuring guitarist Marc Ducret and drummer Tom Rainey.
Thursday January 28th at Rhizome DC. Doors at 7:00, music at 7:30. Admission: $25-$30, sliding scale. Advance Tickets.
Tim Berne (alto saxophone), Marc Ducret (guitar), and Tom Rainey (drums).
“A D.I.Y. Jazz Institution” - from a 2024 NYT article on Berne’s long career and his ongoing residency at the Lowlands Bar in Brooklyn.
Though Tim Berne was a music fan, he had no interest in playing a musical instrument until he was in college, when he purchased an alto saxophone. He was more interested in rhythm and blues music – Stax records releases and Aretha Franklin, especially – until he heard Julius Hemphill’s 1972 recording Dogon A.D.
Hemphill was known for his integration of soul music and funk with free jazz. Berne moved to New York City in 1974. There Berne took lessons from Hemphill, and later recorded with him.
In 1979, Berne founded Empire Records to release his own recordings. He recorded Fulton Street Maul and Sanctified Dreams for Columbia Records, which generated some discussion and controversy, due in part to the fact that Berne’s music had little in common with the neo-traditionalist hard bop performers prominent in the mid-1980s. Some regarded Berne’s music as uncommercial. In the late 1990s Berne founded Screwgun Records, which has released his own recordings, as well as others’ music.
Beyond his recordings as a bandleader, Berne has recorded and/or performed with guitarist Bill Frisell, avant-garde composer/sax player John Zorn, violinist Mat Maneri, guitarist David Torn, cellist Hank Roberts, trumpet player Herb Robertson, the ARTE Quartett and as a member of the cooperative trio Miniature.
Recent years have found Berne performing in several different groups with drummers Tom Rainey, Gerald Cleaver, and Nasheet Waits; keyboardists Craig Taborn and Matt Mitchell; bassists Michael Formanek, Drew Gress, and John Hebert; guitarists Marc Ducret, David Torn, and Greg Belisle-Chi; reeds player Chris Speed; and multi-instrumentalist Aurora Nealand.
Berne’s complex, multi-section compositions are often quite lengthy; twenty- to thirty-minute pieces are not unusual. One critic wrote that Berne’s long songs “don’t grow tiresome. The musicians are brilliantly creative and experienced enough not to get lost in all the room provided by these large time frames.”
https://timberne.bandcamp.com/music
Guitarist Marc Ducret was born in Paris in 1957. A self-taught musician, he began working in various groups (dance and folk included), and in the studio, before reaching the age of 20. In 1986, he became a member of the first French National Jazz Orchestra. Also in the late '80s, Ducret led his own trio and toured Europe, Africa, and Asia. In 1991, he began working with Tim Berne and went on to play with Berne in Caos Totale, Bloodcount, and Big Satan. Ducret has several solo recordings to his credit, released on Berne's Screwgun label and the Winter & Winter label. In the late '90s, Ducret formed a tentet, Seven Songs, to explore music of the '60s.
Berne, Ducret bios courtesy of Out Of Your Head Records.
https://marcducret.bandcamp.com/
Born in Los Angeles in 1957, drummer Tom Rainey grew up in Santa Barbara before moving to New York City in 1979. Rainey got his start playing straight-ahead jazz gigs in the Big Apple during the early ‘80s, often as part of a trio with pianist Kenny Werner and bassist Ratzo Harris. Subsequently, Rainey met Tim Berne, forming a working relationship with the maverick saxophonist that continues to this day. At the same time, Rainey was performing with luminaries such as Jane Ira Bloom, Fred Hersch, and Andy Laster – before recording dates and tours with Berne became the drummer’s primary gig, many of which also featured bassist Drew Gress. Rainey’s partnership with Berne was documented on numerous live and studio recordings made from the mid-‘90s through the turn of the millennium, in Berne’s groups Big Satan, Paraphrase, Hard Cell, and Science Friction. Berne’s ensembles allowed Rainey great improvisational freedom, with collective group interplay that balanced rhythmic drive and colorful textures.
Rainey also collaborated with other artists during this fertile time, playing with Mark Helias, Brad Shepik, and Angelica Sanchez, among many others. Despite Rainey’s unassailable credentials as a master improviser, the drummer had not led a recording date as a bandleader until the release of Pool School (Clean Feed), the debut of his trio with guitarist Mary Halvorson and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock in 2010 (the same year that Rainey and Laubrock were married). The trio’s sophomore effort, Camino Cielo Echo (Intakt) followed two years later, with Rainey regularly appearing in Laubrock’s ensembles as well. In 2014 Rainey issued Obbligato, his third album as a bandleader, leading a quintet by the same name with Laubrock, Gress, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and pianist Kris Davis, which freely interpreted jazz standards.
During the COVID pandemic, Rainey and Laubrock released weekly recordings - mostly recorded in their Brooklyn home - on bandcamp as part of their Stir Crazy series. — from Troy Collins interview with Tom Rainey at Point Of Departure.