Over the past several months, the Wednesday night jazz series at the Empty Bottle has built a loyal following among listeners who value new sounds and novel ways of organizing them.
Most of the programs have featured provocative artists who dramatically have extended the technical and musical capabilities of their instruments, from the startling finger virtuosity of guitarist Joe Morris to the outlandish solo musings of trumpeter Joe McPhee.
Compared to these and many other visionaries who have distinguished the Empty Bottle series, however, saxophonist Tim Berne’s Bloodcount band proved positively anemic during their first set Wednesday night.
Perhaps a generation ago, the series of Berne compositions that the ensemble played might have seemed intriguing, if not necessarily innovative. The players’ pointillistic approach to improvisation, with each instrumentalist abruptly entering and exiting the sonic texture of any given piece, at least defied more traditional, post-be-bop concepts of melody, harmony and ensemble playing.
But considering all that has transpired in the evolution of “free jazz” playing over the past 30 years, considering the ferocious assault that various musical revolutionaries have waged on the most basic assumptions about pitch, color and rhythm, Berne’s Bloodcount almost could be termed quaint.
The ensemble’s generally muted volume levels, transparent textures and extremely tame dissonances might have made more impact if these players were offering something–anything–that hadn’t already been said before. But the occasional, comparatively soft-spoken honks and rasps that Berne and Chris Speed produced on a variety of reed instruments made minimal impression. And though drummer Jim Black and bassist Michael Formanek kept matters a little more interesting with constantly shifting rhythmic ideas, their contributions were so soft-spoken as to be barely perceptible.
Compared to, say, such Chicago avant-garde outfits as the relatively new Witches & Devils, the august NRG Ensemble and a slew of bands affiliated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Berne’s New York group was underwhelming at best, irrelevant at worst.
Berne’s fans have likened him to Anthony Braxton, but judging by the Empty Bottle show, Braxton packs more musical information into a few bars than Berne’s ensemble did during whole compositions.
Ultimately, Berne’s works may have been new, but his ideas have been around for years.
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Reed player Guillermo Gregorio will perform Wednesday at the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave., Chicago. Phone 312-276-3600.
