Steven Bernstein Releases Brilliant Twin Albums

I have long been a Steven Bernstein superfan. He is one of the most creative and alive people in contemporary jazz, leading a few madcap bands, arranging horn sections for artists well beyond jazz, and conceiving of recordings that refract musical history with wit and daring.

My appreciation for Bernstein‘s brilliant recordings with his Millennial Territory Orchestra, for example, is often best-of-the-year enthusiastic, and you should never miss hearing him when he reunites with his antic band Sexmob. And his four-part “Diaspora” series (Diaspora Soul, Diaspora Blues, Diaspora Hollywood, and Diaspora Suite, released between 1999 and 2008 on John Zorn‘s Tzadik label) joyfully traces the Jewish elements of jazz across various strands of American musical history.

That is, I have tended to see Bernstein as a conceptualist. Which he is, if the most fun conceptualist ever, but I have spent too little time appreciating him as a trumpet player.

On this pair of new recordings, he shines as a pure horn player (on standard B-flat trumpet, G trumpet, and flugelhorn) passing on his oft-used slide trumpet, and he remains a conceptualist. The first album, ResoNation Trio, finds him playing relatively brief performances with acoustic bass player Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Waits on nine originals and the old blues “Sittin’ on Top of the World”.

Then, on the companion record Ultra Resonance, he and producer Scott Harding (aka “Scotty Hard”) take the original recordings and mine them for sonic gold in creating eight wholly new compositions/performances. The new refractions of the originals are unrecognizable and are supplemented by additional playing from an EVI (“electronic valve instrument”) synth, sampling, keyboards, lap steel, percussion, and more. Harding, a hip-hop artist and pupil of Teo Macero, has changed the source much more than Macero altered the sound of In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew. Of course, the project arrives at the time of the Miles Davis Centennial, perhaps not a coincidence.

Listeners who want to know how Bernstein holds up as a jazz composer and trumpeter might dig into ResoNation Trio for a satisfying listen. Like Davis, Bernstein is a horn player who stays in the lower and middle ranges of the horn, relying on musical intelligence rather than virtuosity. In “Pettiford”, he has created a simple melodic theme (a three-note figure and a two-note figure, repeated or not, in a simple sequence, then built out into a more flowing line, all supplemented by busy and engaging bass and drum patterns) over which he improvises with wit for perhaps a minute. It’s a hip lark.

The original tune, “Woodstock” (not Joni’s, Bernstein lives in the Hudson Valley), lets Colley play a funky, syncopated bass line, around which Waits rat-a-tats while the trumpet takes the lead and bounces along without too much fanfare. “Mammoth” gives the horn more work to do. Still, the bassist and drummer are similarly busy, playing overlapping grooves that clap-trap around each other, typically landing on the ONE as surely as any George Clinton track would.

In the flexibly tempoed ballad, “Two Shakes”, Colley and Waits are just as hard at work, improvising with urgency as Bernstein’s horn holds the center of the meditative composition. “Question” is also a quiet theme, a minor melody that gives Bernstein the chance to arc his tone into ripe notes that then fall downward. Waits is like a dancer on his toms as Colley improvises.

The one cover is an old country blues tune that has been recorded by just about everyone from James Blood Ulmer to the Grateful Dead, “Sittin’ on Top of the World”. Bernstein makes it the last track on The ResoNation Trio, and it works like a charm. The band plays it with a suspended-time feeling for two minutes, Waits rattling rather than grooving, and Colley sometimes joining Bernstein to play elements of the melody in octaves. For the last chorus, Waits snaps to a backbeat, and we get a satisfying end to the recital. It’s a long conversation brought to a point of agreement.

As a trumpet player, Bernstein is modest but assured. He plays with Milesian simplicity and clarity, but his tone is darker. His statement of the melody (in octaves with the bass) on “August 3rd” is clean and simple, and he does not hurry into his improvisation. It is stately, slow, and simple, featuring beautifully held notes and silences. On “Question”, he shapes every note carefully, with hints of fray and blues bends, but also fills his sound with rich if subtle vibrato.

ResoNation Trio is, in every sense, a display of Bernstein’s classic ability as a jazz trumpet player within a tradition we all recognize.

Then comes Ultra Resonance. There isn’t a one-to-one remaking of the ResoNation Trio tracks here, but rather a wholly new album, with Scotty Hard and Bernstein building new compositions not only from elements of the first album but also from additional electronics and other instruments.

Crank up “Chromium” and you hear electronic beats, a growling low synth lick layered with high-pitched synthesized sounds—no acoustic bass, trumpet, or drum kit to be heard at first. Bernstein’s horn comes in two-and-a-half minutes in, looping a single lick and then unspooling more expansively as acoustic drum sounds roll in beneath him.

“Titano” comes more quickly to the original trio, using a snippet of a Colley bass line in repetition, with a mixture of acoustic and electronic percussion, all mixed deliciously to accentuate the groove. Bernstein’s horn seems to play over the rhythm section freely but hypnotically. “Argon” also takes advantage of Colley’s big sound on the bottom while advancing an array of echoing electronic percussion, then slicing up tones from Bernstein’s trumpet and using them to build a whole new melodic structure, one that clearly traces the repetitions and jagged rhythmic feel of hip-hop.

“Erbium” may be the most successful of the new, Scotty Hard-produced tracks. The “band” sounds live, with a syncopated drum pattern driving it all like a funk-rock engine, while Colley’s bass thumps beneath an overdriven lead that could be Bernstein’s “Electronic Valve Instrument”. In contrast, “Niobium” is mostly atmospheric, a closing track that seems almost utterly disconnected from Resonation Trio until some drum patterning enters, which has to be Waits.

Still, the point of these twinned yet utterly different albums is not to create obvious connection. Instead, Bernstein and Harding achieve something more conceptually interesting. They address two different formats and tools for creative, improvised music, with some elements overlapping. These two styles—the acoustic jazz trio and the hip-hop production format—both draw on or connect to the same traditions (blues, jazz, soul). Still, their vocabularies and formal elements have different strengths and outcomes.

I love them both, and having the two albums as pseudo-reflections causes me to consider the breadth and richness of American music. For all the amazing horn playing that we finally hear from Steven Bernstein ResoNation Trio, Ultra Resonance reminds us that he remains daring and highly conceptual. It’s great to have both Bernsteins cooking at the same time.