Thursday January 28 * doors at 7:00, music at 7:30 * $25-30 * TICKETS
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.
“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. 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.”
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.
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.