Tim Berne

Tim Berne (born October 16, 1954) is an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and record label owner. His primary instruments are the alto and baritone saxophones.

Biography

Berne was born in Syracuse, New York, United States. He has said that he had no interest in playing an instrument until he attended Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. Hearing the album Dogon A.D. (1972) by Julius Hemphill turned his attention toward jazz. He was a fan of rhythm and blues, and it seemed to him that Hemphill was playing jazz with the soulfulness of R&B. In 1974, he went to New York to find Hemphill, who gave him saxophone lessons and advice on how to manage his career. Berne started the record label Empire in 1979.

For Empire, he recorded four albums with avant-garde jazz musicians such as John Carter, Alex Cline, Nels Cline, Olu Dara, Vinny Golia, Paul Motian, and Ed Schuller. His next two albums appeared on Soul Note in the early 1980s. In these sessions he worked with Motian, Schuller, Ray Anderson, Herb Robertson and others. He then got a contract with Columbia and recorded with Robertson, Hank Roberts, Bill Frisell and others. During this time he also recorded a duo album with Frisell and two albums with John Zorn. After two albums with Columbia, he signed with JMT, a label known for avant-garde jazz.

In the 1990s, he recorded in the trio, Miniature, with Roberts and Joey Baron, and in the band Caos Totale with Django Bates, Mark Dresser, Marc Ducret, Steve Swell, and Bobby Previte. He led a trio with Michael Formanek and Jim Black, then added Chris Speed to form the quartet Bloodcount (which was occasionally a quintet with the addition of Ducret). PolyGram bought JMT and closed it. This motivated Berne to start Screwgun Records as the outlet for his albums.

Screwgun's first release was a 3-disc set by Bloodcount called Unwound, the music of which exemplified Berne's characteristic style of "explod[ing] the walls of traditional compositional form: instead of adhering to anything remotely resembling theme and variations, he intersperses thematic material–sometimes repeated, elongated, or truncated–with the careening pleasures of free improvisation." During the late 1990s he continued to perform with Bloodcount, formed Paraphrase, a trio with Drew Gress and Tom Rainey, and Big Satan, a trio with Ducret and Rainey.

In the early 2000s, Berne formed several groups, including the trio Hard Cell with Rainey and Craig Taborn, and the quartet Science Friction (Berne, Ducret, Rainey,and Taborn). He also collaborated with members of The Bad Plus for the project Buffalo Collision, with Nels Cline of Wilco for the critically acclaimed album The Veil in 2011, and with David Torn on several projects and recordings.

Berne formed the band Snakeoil with Matt Mitchell, Oscar Noriega, and Ches Smith, which released a self-titled album in 2012, and six more recordings, with slight personnel changes, over the next decade. During this time, he has also recorded with members of The Bad Plus as Broken Shadows, and in duos with several musicians. In 2023 he released Oceans And with Hank Roberts and Aurora Nealand.

Recently albums by other musicians interpreting Berne's music have begun to appear. These include Førage by Matt Mitchell, Koi by Gregg Belisle-Chi, and Palm Sweat by Marc Ducret.

Groups

• BBC Trio (Jim Black, Nels Cline)
• Big Satan (Marc Ducret, Tom Rainey)
• Bloodcount (Jim Black, Marc Ducret, Michael Formanek, Chris Speed)
• Broken Shadows (Reid Anderson, David King, Chris Speed)
• Buffalo Collision (Ethan Iverson, David King, Hank Roberts)
• Caos Totale (Django Bates, Mark Dresser, Marc Ducret, Bobby Previte, Herb Robertson, Steve Swell)
• Hard Cell (Tom Rainey, Craig Taborn)
• Miniature (Joey Baron, Hank Roberts)
• Paraphrase (Drew Gress, Tom Rainey)
• Science Friction (Marc Ducret, Tom Rainey, Craig Taborn)
• Snakeoil (Marc Ducret, Matt Mitchell, Oscar Noriega, Ches Smith, formerly Ryan Ferreira)

Discography

• 1979 The Five Year Plan (Empire)
• 1980 7X (Empire)
• 1981 Spectres (Empire)
• 1982 Songs and Rituals in Real Time (Empire)
• 1983 The Ancestors (Soul Note)
• 1984 Mutant Variations (Soul Note)
• 1987 Fulton Street Maul (Columbia)
• 1988 Sanctified Dreams (Columbia)
• 1989 Tim Berne's Fractured Fairy Tales (JMT)
• 1993 Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) (JMT)
• 1999 The Empire Box (Screwgun)
• 2011 Insomnia (Clean Feed)
• 2020 Sacred Vowels (Screwgun)
• 2020 Adobe Probe (Screwgun)
• 2022 Decay (Screwgun)

With ARTE Quartet

• 2002 The Sevens (New World)

With BB&C

• 2011 The Veil (Cryptogramophone)

With Gregg Belisle-Chi

• 2022 Mars (Intakt)
• 2022 Zone One (Screwgun)

With Big Satan

• 1997 Big Satan (Winter & Winter)
• 2004 Souls Saved Hear (Thirsty Ear)
• 2006 Livein Cognito (Screwgun)

With Bloodcount

• 1995 Lowlife: The Paris Concert (JMT)
• 1995 Poisoned Minds: The Paris Concert (JMT)
• 1995 Memory Select: The Paris Concert (JMT)
• 1996 Unwound (Screwgun)
• 1997 Discretion (Screwgun)
• 1997 Saturation Point (Screwgun)
• 2007 Seconds (Screwgun)
• 2021 Attention Spam (Screwgun)
• 2021 5 (Screwgun)

With Broken Shadows

• 2019 Broken Shadows (Newvelle)
• 2020 Broken Shadows Live (Screwgun)

With Buffalo Collision

• 2008 Duck (Screwgun)

With Caos Totale

• 1990 Pace Yourself (JMT)
• 1994 Nice View (JMT)

With Bruno Chevillon

• 2011 Old and Unwise (Clean Feed)

With Marilyn Crispell

• 1995 Inference (Music & Arts)

With Michael Formanek

• 1993 Loose Cannon (Soul Note)
• 1998 Ornery People (Little Brother)

With Bill Frisell

• 1984 Theoretically (Empire)

With Hardcell

• 2001 The Shell Game (Thirsty Ear)
• 2004 Electric and Acoustic Hard Cell Live (Screwgun)
• 2005 Feign (Screwgun)
• 2020 The Cosmos (Screwgun)
• 2021 Sensitive (Screwgun)

With Miniature

• 1988 Miniature (JMT)
• 1991 I Can't Put My Finger on It (JMT)

With Matt Mitchell

• 2018 Angel Dusk (Screwgun)
• 2020 1 (Screwgun)
• 2020 Spiders (Out of Your Head)
• 2022 One More, Please (Intakt)

With Aurora Nealand and Hank Roberts

• 2023 Oceans And (Intakt)

With Paraphrase

• 1997 Visitation Rites (Screwgun)
• 1999 Please Advise (Screwgun)
• 2005 Pre-Emptive Denial (Screwgun)

With Hank Roberts

• 1998 Cause & Reflect (Level Green)

With Herb Robertson, Marc Ducret and the Copenhagen Art Ensemble

• 2001 Open, Coma (Screwgun)

With Science Friction

• 2002 Science Friction (Screwgun)
• 2003 The Sublime And (Thirsty Ear)
• 2007 Mind Over Friction (Screwgun)
• 2020 Science Friction +size (Screwgun)

With Snakeoil

• 2012 Snakeoil (ECM)
• 2013 Shadow Man (ECM)
• 2015 You've Been Watching Me (ECM)
• 2015 Spare (Screwgun)
• 2017 Incidentals (ECM)
• 2020 The Fantastic Mrs. 10 (Intakt)
• 2020 The Deceptive 4 (Intakt)

With Nasheet Waits

• 2020 The Coandă Effect (Relative Pitch)
• 2022 Tangled (Screwgun)

With Ray Anderson

• Big Band Record (Gramavision, 1994)

With Nels Cline

• Angelica (Enja, 1988)

With Marc Ducret

• Tower Vol. 2 (Ayler, 2011)
• Tower Bridge (Ayler, 2014)

With Enten Eller

• Melquiades (Splasc(H), 1999)
• Auto da Fe (Splasc(H), 2001)

With Umberto Petrin

• Ellessi (Splasc(H), 1999)

With Jazzophone Compagnie

• Mosaiques (Yolk, 2000)

With Simon Fell

• Positions & Descriptions (Clean Feed, 2011)

With Figure 8

• Pipe Dreams (Black Saint, 1994)

With Michael Formanek

• Extended Animation (Enja, 1992)
• Low Profile (Enja, 1994)
• Nature of the Beast (Enja, 1997)
• The Rub and Spare Change (ECM, 2010)
• Small Places (ECM, 2012)
• The Distance (ECM, 2016)
• Even Better (Intakt, 2019)
• Pre-Apocalyptic (Out Of Your Head, 2020)

With Vinny Golia

• Compositions for Large Ensemble (Nine Winds, 1984)
• Facts of Their Own Lives (Nine Winds, 1986)

With Drew Gress

• Spin & Drift (Premonition, 2001)
• 7 Black Butterflies (Premonition, 2005)
• The Irrational Numbers (Premonition, 2007)
• The Sky Inside (Pirouet, 2013)

With Mark Helias

• Split Image (Enja, 1985)
• The Current Set (Enja, 1986)

With Julius Hemphill

• Five Chord Stud (Black Saint, 1994)
• One Atmosphere (Tzadik, 2003)

With Ingrid Laubrock

• Ubatuba (2015)

With Mr. Rencore

• Intollerant (Auand, 2011)

With Ivo Perelman

• (D)ivo (2022)

With Hank Roberts

• Black Pastels (JMT, 1988)

With Herb Robertson

• Transparency (JMT, 1985)
• X-Cerpts: Live at Willisau (JMT, 1987)
• Elaboration (Clean Feed, 2005)
• Real Aberration (Clean Feed, 2007)

With Samo Salamon & Tom Rainey

• Duality (Samo, 2012)

With George Schuller

• Hellbent (Playscape, 2002)

With Ches Smith

• Hammered (Clean Feed, 2013)
• International Hoohah (For Tune, 2014)

With Spring Heel Jack

• Masses (Thirsty Ear, 2001)

With David Torn, Craig Taborn, and Tom Rainey

• Prezens (ECM, 2005)
• Slipped on a Bar (Screwgun, 2009)
• xFORM (Screwgun, 2020)
• DISCO TENT (Screwgun, 2024) Torn Rainey Berne Dunn

With David Torn and Ches Smith

• Sun of Goldfinger (ECM, 2019)
• Congratulations To You (Screwgun, 2020)
• Ozmir (Screwgun, 2022)
• Mystic (Screwgun, 2023) With Aurora Nealand
• Candid (Intakt, 2024) as The Sunny Five (Torn/Berne/Smith/Hoff/Ducret)

With Stefan Winter

• The Little Trumpet (JMT, 1986)

With Yōsuke Yamashita

• Ways of Time (Verve, 1995)

With John Zorn

• The Big Gundown (Nonesuch/Icon, 1986)
• Spy vs Spy (Elektra/Musician, 1989)