Tim Berne's Snakeoil at GiG Performance Space

Recently ranked in the Top 10 of Time Out New York’s “Essential NYC Jazz Icons”, and called “the definitive genius of NYC’s downtown 1980s jazz scene” alto-saxophonist, Tim Berne, a protégé of the great Julius Hemphill, has been committed, for his entire career, to exploring the small group jazz idiom.Tim Berne’s third ECM album, You’ve Been Watching Me, sees the saxophonist-composer again leading his ultra-dynamic New York band Snakeoil. The group’s 2013 release, Shadow Man, garnered Berne some of the highest praise of his career as a composer and bandleader, with JazzTimes marveling over how his work grows “wilder and deeper.” The four-star Downbeat review said: “This music rocks and thinks, explores, deconstructs and, yes, it swings, in its own identifiably angular, Berne-ian way.” Just as Berne has hit a new peak with his writing on You’ve Been Watching Me, his band has reached a heightened state of collective interaction, realizing the compositions to a tee...

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Recently ranked in the Top 10 of Time Out New York’s “Essential NYC Jazz Icons”, and called “the definitive genius of NYC’s downtown 1980s jazz scene” alto-saxophonist, Tim Berne, a protégé of the great Julius Hemphill, has been committed, for his entire career, to exploring the small group jazz idiom.Tim Berne’s third ECM album, You’ve Been Watching Me, sees the saxophonist-composer again leading his ultra-dynamic New York band Snakeoil. The group’s 2013 release, Shadow Man, garnered Berne some of the highest praise of his career as a composer and bandleader, with JazzTimes marveling over how his work grows “wilder and deeper.” The four-star Downbeat review said: “This music rocks and thinks, explores, deconstructs and, yes, it swings, in its own identifiably angular, Berne-ian way.” Just as Berne has hit a new peak with his writing on You’ve Been Watching Me, his band has reached a heightened state of collective interaction, realizing the compositions to a tee. Snakeoil – with the leader on alto sax alongside pianist Matt Mitchell, clarinetist Oscar Noriega and percussionist Ches Smith can still be bracingly kinetic. But there is new space in these compositions and more lyrical focus to the improvisations, leading to a dramatic, even cinematic experience in such tracks as “Embraceable Me.” Put simply, Berne’s music has never been richer or more arresting.

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