| Tim Berne was born in Syracuse, New York in 1954, and was subjected to a perfectly normal childhood. But he didn't decide to take up music until nearly twenty years later when he was attending Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, putting most of his energy into intramural basketball. At this point, while resting a sore ankle in his dormitory, Berne encountered a saxophonist who was selling his alto, and bought it on impulse. There was just something about the sound of the saxophone that got to me, he says. Musically, up to that point, Berne had always been motivated by all types of music, but especially by the great Stax artists like Sam and Dave and Johnnie Taylor, as well as Motown artists like Martha and the Vandellas and Gladys Knight. This passion for the soulful quality in music would follow him for the rest of his career, a career that he could not possibly foreseen at the time. I hadn't listened to much jazz, but then I heard Julius Hemphill's album Dogon A.D., and that completely turned me around. It captured everything I liked in music. It had this Stax/R&B sensibility and it had this other wildness. It was incredible. That's when I started playing.
The Shell Game heralds Berne's return to the studio after a nearly 8 year hiatus. Always pushing the new frontier Berne has assembled a trio representing something old and something new. Mainstay sideman, Tom Rainey plays drums and new inductee, Craig Taborn, last heard on the critically acclaimed Matt Maneri album, checks in on keyboards. That's right... this is an electic album taking Berne's music deep into the new century with a suite of musical arrangements. The Shell Game heralds Berne's return to the studio after a nearly 8 year hiatus. Always pushing the new frontier Berne has assembled a trio representing something old and something new. Mainstay sideman, Tom Rainey plays drums and new inductee, Craig Taborn, last heard on the critically acclaimed Matt Maneri album, checks in on keyboards. That's right... this is an eclectic album taking Berne's music deep into the new century with a suite of musical arrangements.
The Shell Game is one of the most sonically differentiated jazz records of recent years. - Down Beat |