Tim Berne’s CAPATOSTA

Tim Berne’s CAPATOSTA

(US)

Saxophonist Tim Berne has always had a special place in his music for guitar. Over the years his bands have included Bill Frisell, Nels Cline and Marc Ducret, all of them forming inextricably tight sonic connections through labyrinthine unison lines and jaggedly contrapuntal melodies. That music exerted a profound influence on a young Seattle guitarist named Gregg Belisle-Chi. Following the lead of Matt Mitchell who transcribed a series of Berne tunes for piano on the 2017 album “Førage”, Belisle-Chi translated a set of Berne’s multi-pronged tunes for guitar on his own 2021 album “KOI”. The composer was impressed.

Berne formed the trio CAPATOSTA with him, enlisting the singular drummer Tom Rainey who experienced the same instrumentation in Berne’s late 90s band Big Satan, alongside Ducret. On this year’s searing “Yikes Too” the new trio ups the ante, jacking up the intensity and somehow making the music even more concentrated and tightly wound. As tricky as Berne’s writing gets, this trio blitzes through it with seeming ease, unspooling lines, rhythmic patterns and interactions of unparalleled complexity with a voracious spirit. Berne’s music has exerted a strong impact on European jazz, directly and indirectly, especially his quartet Bloodcount, but the saxophonist has never rested on his laurels. He’s always too busy looking ahead.