Alexander Berne and the Abandoned Orchestra
I was totally blown away by track 6 (The Abandoned Orchestra: Auriga) from this "no longer almost free" Innova Recordings sampler:
- So, in that respect, here's Alexander Berne's very own thread:
************************************************************************************************************************************************************
BIOGRAPHY: ALEXANDER BERNE, COMPOSER & SAXOPHONIST:
"Alexander Berne is a composer, visual artist, and virtuoso musician of the highest order. Born in New York, he cut his teeth on the jazz sceneafter studies with Tim Ries, John Purcell, and Eddie Daniels he began working with such luminaries as Billy Hart, Victor Lewis, Mark Johnson, Ethan Iverson, Cecil Taylor, Ben Monder, John Hollenbeck, Kevin Hays, Jeff Ballard, Larry Grenadier, Albert Tootie Heath and many others. During that period he taught at the prestigious Stanford University Jazz Workshop alongside Joe Henderson and Stan Getz.
Berne then moved to Belgium where he devoted himself to solo saxophone performances, to highest acclaim at Logos and elsewhere for using technical innovation to sonically transport listeners.
Returning to America, Berne became involved in film production, working on and producing independent documentaries and features for his company, Harbor Productions, including work with Nicholas Hytner and Jim Broadbent at the Royal National in London, Brian DePalma, Edward Pressman, Paul Williams, and Armondo Linus Acosta. This was accompanied by a phase of creative activity in the visual arts, where he invented a new form of painting involving the abstracts play of photo emulsion and acrylics on paper.
Berne is an innovator in the woodwind realm, specializing in alto, soprano, and sopranino saxophones. He was involved in the creation and production of a new kind of mouthpiece, in collaboration with David Sanborn. In addition, he created his own instrument, collaborating with famous instrument maker Michael Hubbard. Called the saduk, it is a cross between a saxophone and the Armenian duduk, and has a warm, woody tone unlike any ever heard before.
A musician with serious interest in the music of other cultures, Berne dedicated years of his life to the study of the tabla and Indian Classical Music, studying with Misha Masud and others. During this phase he developed relationships with Debashish Bhattacharya, Krishna Bhatt and other world instrumentalists such as Lu Fang and Glenn Velez.
- Ariumcafe.com
- http://www.alexanderberne.com/
- So, in that respect, here's Alexander Berne's very own thread:
************************************************************************************************************************************************************
BIOGRAPHY: ALEXANDER BERNE, COMPOSER & SAXOPHONIST:
"Alexander Berne is a composer, visual artist, and virtuoso musician of the highest order. Born in New York, he cut his teeth on the jazz sceneafter studies with Tim Ries, John Purcell, and Eddie Daniels he began working with such luminaries as Billy Hart, Victor Lewis, Mark Johnson, Ethan Iverson, Cecil Taylor, Ben Monder, John Hollenbeck, Kevin Hays, Jeff Ballard, Larry Grenadier, Albert Tootie Heath and many others. During that period he taught at the prestigious Stanford University Jazz Workshop alongside Joe Henderson and Stan Getz.
Berne then moved to Belgium where he devoted himself to solo saxophone performances, to highest acclaim at Logos and elsewhere for using technical innovation to sonically transport listeners.
Returning to America, Berne became involved in film production, working on and producing independent documentaries and features for his company, Harbor Productions, including work with Nicholas Hytner and Jim Broadbent at the Royal National in London, Brian DePalma, Edward Pressman, Paul Williams, and Armondo Linus Acosta. This was accompanied by a phase of creative activity in the visual arts, where he invented a new form of painting involving the abstracts play of photo emulsion and acrylics on paper.
Berne is an innovator in the woodwind realm, specializing in alto, soprano, and sopranino saxophones. He was involved in the creation and production of a new kind of mouthpiece, in collaboration with David Sanborn. In addition, he created his own instrument, collaborating with famous instrument maker Michael Hubbard. Called the saduk, it is a cross between a saxophone and the Armenian duduk, and has a warm, woody tone unlike any ever heard before.
A musician with serious interest in the music of other cultures, Berne dedicated years of his life to the study of the tabla and Indian Classical Music, studying with Misha Masud and others. During this phase he developed relationships with Debashish Bhattacharya, Krishna Bhatt and other world instrumentalists such as Lu Fang and Glenn Velez.
- Ariumcafe.com
- http://www.alexanderberne.com/
Comments
"The genesis of the first CD The Soprano Saxophone Choir came years ago as an exercise to improve my tone. I found that by creating (in studio) an accompaniment of various layered tones and phrases, in different registers and with different timbres, I could awaken hidden qualities in my sound. Vibrations are powerful, and we sometimes forget that there are actual physical changes taking place in the instrument which have corresponding aesthetic effects on the practitioner and hopefully the listener as well. There seems to be a special, even mystical quality when an instrument or voice is multiplied by itself a choir. This first CD is an exploration of that choir phenomenon: many soprano saxophones living together, magnifying the overtonal, textural, harmonic, vibratory, soundistic experience."
<span style="font-weight: bold;">- Alexander Berne about The Saduk</span>:
"CD two, The Saduk - What do nearly all instrumental virtuoso do? Running headlong into limitations, they make significant changes to their instruments or in some cases make a new one entirely. I love the saxophone deeply, but it has some inherent constraints. It is a heavy instrument, laden down with many large keys; you need a lot of breath to vibrate its elongated conical metal tube.
Often longing for a more tender palette of expression than the saxophone would allow, I developed flute envy.
My solution was to create the saduk, the simple open-holed flute/reed hybrid featured on these tracks. Inspired in equal measure by an inner sound one that I have felt as much as heard throughout my life and the primal, tender wind instruments found in most world traditions, this recording marries a prenatally familiar wind expression with voice, percussion, saxophone and other acoustic sounds".
<span style="font-weight: bold;">- Alexander Berne about The Abandoned Orchestra:</span>
"For the third CD, The Abandoned Orchestra, I did not throw in everything but the kitchen sink; I did, however, use enough plumbing materials making new wind instruments to fix that sink quite a few times over. Along with the saxophone and saduk I created the sadukini (a conically functioning saduk, similar to world oboes like the nadaswaram, shenai, or zurna), the tridoulaphone (another flute/reed hybrid heard here in soprano, alto, and tenor registers), and a reeded slide trumpet.
The Abandoned Orchestra continues with my solitary, unassisted practice of composing, performing and recording. I have been contemplating the two senses of abandonment: to be abandoned is to be either forsaken or unrestrained but isolation and desertion may lead to autonomy and liberty. In this self-layered orchestra, I have explored my own diverse pre- and post-ethnic sound world..."
- More words from Alexander Berne and reviews @ Innova Recordings</div>
Alexander Berne and the Abandoned Orchestra - Flickers of Mime - Death of Memes
- (Coincidental Music For an Unwritten Show (of the Mind),
- Innova - 2011
"Alexander Berne's triple-CD collection Composed And Performed By Alexander Berne lodged itself firmly within textura's 2010 top ten list, and his entrancing two-CD follow-up Flickers of Mime / Death of Memes finds the multi-instrumentalist and composer poised to do much the same a year later. On the new material, Berne and his so-called Abandoned Orchestra create mesmerizing sound-paintings by augmenting his saxophone (tenor, alto, and soprano) and saduk (a self-created instrument that combines a flute and reed instrument) with piano, lap steel guitar, ocarina, Chinese bamboo flute, recorder, Irish whistle, conch shells, and guttural vocal effects (his other invented instruments include the tridoulaphoneanother flute-reed hybridand the shakuhachophone, a shakuhachi-saxophone creation). There's a strong Eastern quality to his sound, to some degree because of the saduk and its inherently exotic timbre, not to mention a fundamentally natural character (Berne generally eschews synthesizers and samples, though drum loops were used on two of the first disc's tracks). Technically, one could call Berne a virtuoso but that would miss the point: instead, his energies are directed towards alchemizing sound into ravishing settings that often suggest states of feverish possession.
In opening with ominous chords and a rising snare roll, Flickers of Mime /Death of Memes begins with what seems to be either an overt or perhaps purely coincidental reference to Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver soundtrack. The moment is perhaps more interesting, however, for being perhaps the sole moment on the release when Berne's music, so thoroughly imprinted with his sensibility, calls to mind the voice of another's. He might at one time have been associated with the jazz scene, but the music he's making now is leagues removed from any straightforward categorization or reference.
For the first disc, Berne visualized a mime who uses his hands and flame to create flickering shadows to induce images and evoke memories in the people around him, an idea that for those familiar with Plato will, of course, remind them of the Myth of the Cave. The music exudes an ancient and primal quality, feeling as it does like material not of any one place or time. Often veiled in darkness and mystery, Flickers of Mime is nachtmusik, a shamanistic travelogue through deep psychic pathways and with a powerfully seductive undertow. Like a snake slithering through dense underbrush, Berne's woodwind melodies travel sinuously through droning and rhythm-based (Flicker VIII) landscapes, at times bringing echoes of classical formality into the fold (Flicker VI) but more often than not transmuting his pieces into haunting dreamscapes (attested to by the pealing melodies in Flicker VII, for example).
The two halves of the recording are dramatically different in tone. Intimating that the second disc will be considerably more disturbing, Meme I plunges us into a zone darker than anything on the first, after which woodwind ululations in Meme II conjure the image of the bereaved wailing at a burial site. An entropic quality pervades the music in such moments, evoking as it does the image of things breaking down, a civilization or culture on the verge of collapse. In keeping with that idea, tempos slow and activity levels grow subdued as the disc develops. The restrained piano-centered ruminations of Meme III feel like the dying embers of said civilization being scanned for signs of life, while the soprano saxophone's coiling melodies rise from the ashes in Meme V like plumes of cigarette smoke. Near disc's end, howls of anguish blacken the droning sixth section, and tribal percussion patterns give the eighth the feel of a funereal procession.
A few of Berne's own words about the recording prove illuminating. His choice of the word synaesthetic to describe his music, for one, begins to suggest how powerfully evocative it is, and his suggested sub-title for the recording, Coincidental Music For an Unwritten Show (of the Mind), likewise captures the sense in which his music feels like material welling up from the unconscious. Packaged in a deluxe and autographed edition, the release is as striking on visual grounds as it is aural."
- Textura.
- Stream of Flickers of Mime @ Soundcloud.
Alexander Berne and the Abandoned Orchestra - Self Referentials Volumes 1 & 2
- "With Self Referentials Volume 1 & 2, Alexander Berne and his Abandoned Orchestra return with their third multi-CD set in as many years. Following "Composed and Performed by Alexander Berne" and "Flickers of Mime/Death of Memes," Bernes latest finds him further refining and deepening a tonal vocabulary that has garnered him spots on critics Best of lists and found him compared to striking artists from across multiple genres, including Kubrick, Cage, Schoenberg and Joyce. In Bernes words, Self Referentials Volume 1 & 2 is the latest recording from the Abandoned Orchestra, my ongoing solitary attempt to present a refined aural (+visual) artistic statement (free of synthesizers and samples) as composer, performer, instrument maker, engineer, visual artist, and producer. The innova double CD is a limited edition of 800 units and includes an original painting with each package, plus liner notes by Maxwell Chandler, who writes, Like daydreams or memories, good works of art regardless of medium offer an inner landscape for the audience to traverse, the work serving as the terra firma. The more compelling works allow one to revisit them, discovering previously unnoticed aspects of the work or for the general colorations of the piece to appeal and reflect the new you that has developed since last visiting the piece. Alexanders Self Referentials Volumes 1 & 2 is indicative of the type of work which facilitates a compulsion to take such an inner journey again and again. In the tradition of the best headphone music, the work doubles as both the landscape to be explored and the Sherpa that accompanies you on the journey. The whole work represents an extended suite: Everything is interconnected not necessarily in the way we conceptualize in the (musical) Western classical tradition but there is an inherent logic once one recognizes that this is the parlance of dreams whose every sentence is punctuated by déjà vu and reveries. This work embodies a trip to be made for the mere act of pressing play and opening oneself up to the experience. In many ways no better thing can be offered up by a work of art.
- Innova Recordings - November 2012 - Soundcloud