Tim Berne

Snakeoil (ECM)

As dramatic as the weather, bright and diffuse one moment, then blustery – even sinister – the next, Tim Berne’s debut as bandleader on jazz and classical vanguard ECM frames a quartet blurring all lines of tonal and structural grounding with avian musical ascension. Produced in New York last January by label head Manfred Eichner, the alto saxophonist’s reptilian coils of brass all but sprout wings on Snakeoil‘s six songs in 68 minutes, and the piano, drums, and clarinet/bass clarinet team with a Darwinian tension. “Simple City” finds Berne and pianist Matt Mitchell climbing as one instrument until Oscar Noriega’s stilling bass clarinet subverts the piano for a duet somewhere between a Tchaikovsky ballet and Gershwin. On “Scanners,” clustering, head-on engagement from the quartet rises and falls, reeds paralleling then crosscut by the percussive half of this foursome. Berne’s birdlike solo early in the 14-minute sweep and swing of “Spare Parts” into “Yield” speaks to his playful incisiveness. (Tim Berne’s quartet lays in at the Cactus Cafe, Friday, Feb. 24.)

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This article appears in February 24 • 2012.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.