Thee They Thy Judith Berkson, Trevor Dunn, Gerald Cleaver

• 1 Slow 03:25
• 2 V'shamru 04:16
• 3 Torque 08:37
• 4 Dust 02:17
• 5 Cleav 02:47
• 6 Notice 03:30
• 7 Thee They Thy 06:27
• 8 Amerika 07:25
• 9 Slowly Walk Into It 04:51
• 10 Sated 04:08
• Total Runtime 47:43

Info for Thee They Thy

Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer and improviser returns on ECM with a compelling new album. “I view the pieces on this recording as a natural extension of my solo work,” says Judith Berkson. “This idea of songs that are quite intimate and personal, informed by jazz with pockets of improvisation but also drawing from song traditions, and avant-garde traditions in their harmonic and melodic material, embracing elements of minimalism and even conceptual art.” The 2010 album Oylam documented Berkson’s creation of her own vocal language and approach to songwriting and the idiosyncratic keyboard accompaniment to support these elements: “I worked on that concept for years.” The logical next step was to develop those ideas in a group context. “Certainly I’m tipping my hat to the classic jazz trio with piano, drums and bass. I thought that would be fun, if I had the right people.”

The right people turned out to be the drummer Gerald Cleaver, with whom Berkson has played on many occasions over the years, and bassist Trevor Dunn, with whom she had not worked previously. They share with Berkson an aversion to limiting their creativity to a single musical idiom. On Thee They Thy, she leads them through a swiftly changing programme with original songs, vocal experimentation, total improvisation, a new setting for prayer and more. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, still “more remarkable than the range of genres is Ms. Berkson’s mastery of them and her ability to weave them into a seamless program. … revealing the connections between seemingly divergent paths.”

Of the album’s ten pieces, the opener, “Slow”, and the closing “Sated” are through-composed songs, as is “Dust”, near the centre of the programme. Much information is condensed in their spare forms. “Dust’s” ultra-minimal four note melody is “sustained over chord changes which come out of 19th century harmony fused with jazz…” "Slowly Walk Into It", meanwhile, was created in the moment. Spontaneous composition, with both words and music unleashed stream-of-consciousness style, is one strand of Judith Berkson’s recent work. Heightened risk and heightened vulnerability belong to the endeavour.

Improvisation in "Torque" is sparked by 12-tone rows, Berkson intuitively “referencing ideas, or sampling them with homage and love, but placing them out of context and juxtaposing concepts, eras and genres.” Likewise, "Thee They Thy", like a dreamworld scat song, was conceived by its composer as “a playful send-up of atonal vocal lines and jazz.” An element of post-modern distancing is at work, and a sense of minimalism “that keeps it from being necessarily either of those things.”

Midway through the album Gerald Cleaver delivers a subtle piece of music for solo drums. One of the great contemporary percussionists, on “Cleav” he gives us intimate, rippling drum music, geared to the dynamics of the project, exploring texture and timbre.

On “Notice” a minimalistically-repeated vocal utterance is gradually overwhelmed by surging piano trio playing. And all three musicians have space to stretch out on the instrumental “Amerika”, with Trevor Dunn delivering a particularly poignant solo statement.

Berkson performing cantorial music is something else again. Listeners who responded to the emotional intensity of “Ahavas Oylam” on her last ECM release will be moved by the powerful “V’shamru” here. Judith: “I wanted to include an original cantorial piece as part of the album. It’s been important. Why not have these pieces sit side by side? If not now, when?” Beneath Berkson’s electrifying vocal, Cleaver’s percussion and Dunn’s bass further stir the emotions and colour the music with great sensitivity.

"Perhaps the most striking departure comes with “V’shamru”, where Berkson draws on her experience as a cantor. The piece carries a raw emotional weight, her voice soaring over the trio’s sensitive accompaniment, and stands out as one of the album’s most immediate and affecting tracks. “Thee They Thy” is not always an easy listen. Its shifting styles and conceptual underpinnings can feel elusive, even opaque. Yet it’s precisely this restless curiosity that makes the album engaging. Berkson’s refusal to settle into a single idiom results in a work that is uneven but undeniably distinctive." (Mike Gates, ukvibe.org)

Judith Berkson, vocals, piano
Trevor Dunn, double bass
Gerald Cleaver, drums

Recorded July 2021, Oktaven Audio, Mount Vernon, NY
Produced by Manfred Eicher

Judith Berkson
is a mezzo-soprano, pianist and composer living in Los Angeles, California.

She studied voice with Lucy Shelton and composition with Joe Maneri at the New England Conservatory. She received her MA in composition from Wesleyan University and a Doctorate in performance and composition from California Institute of the Arts.

Judith has collaborated with Kronos Quartet, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire and City Opera and has presented work at Picasso Museum Malaga, Roulette, Le Poisson Rouge, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, Barbès, Bang On A Can, and the 92 Street Y. She has received a Six Points Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation grant, Meet The Composer grant, New Music USA funding and support from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her solo album “Oylam” (ECM Records) was called “Standards and Schubert and liturgical music, swing and chilly silences, a beautiful Satie-like piece to open and close the record” by Ben Ratliff of the New York Times.

She composed music for the film Christopher at Sea (2022), a queer retelling of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise which premiered at Sundance and the Venice Biennale, and won awards at SXSW and at Outfest LA. Her latest chamber opera Partial Memories premiered at the NODO Festival in Ostrava, Czechia. It was dedicated to forgotten female artists Janet Sobel and Mary Gartside and featured the Ostravská Banda.

Judith is also a cantor and has collaborated on Yiddish and cantorial music with Frank London and Theodore Bikel. As a vocalist she has premiered works by Enno Poppe, Alvin Lucier, Rick Burckhardt and Chaya Czernowin. She has served as DMA Lecturer at California Institute of the Arts and as a guest lecturer at Columbia University and at The New School.

Trevor Dunn
s an American musician. His primary instrument is bass and double bass. Dunn has a degree in music, learning double bass at college. Dunn began playing bass as a teenager. In high school, Dunn formed Mr. Bungle with vocalist Mike Patton and guitarist Trey Spruance. Mr. Bungle's early compositions mixed thrash metal, hard rock, and funk with an air of adolescent humor and vulgarity. With a background in metal, Dunn branched out his musical abilities playing jazz around San Francisco while immersing himself in different music. His playing on Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante displayed Dunn's maturity as a player as the compositions shift from different musical stylings several times in every song. Dunn prefers to play simple bass lines in other's compositions choosing to support song structures. He is (or has been) a member of: Mr. Bungle Fantômas Secret Chiefs 3 Trevor Dunn's Trio-convulsant He has contributed to or played with: John Zorn's Electric Masada John Zorn's Naked City Tin Hat Trio Melvins Matisyahu Many other Bay Area and New York artists Trevor Dunn has a strange obsession with the platypus. He has the platypus as a cover on one of his albums, and has co-wrote a song called "Platypus" while in the band Mr. Bungle. In the early days of Mr. Bungle he played a Ibanez bass built sometime in the 1980's, and later on, he used an Alembic 5-String and a double bass. He mostly uses a 1975 Fender P-Bass tuned to BEAD for Fantômas. He plays double bass with Trevor Dunn's Trio-convulsant. Like the other members of Mr. Bungle, Trevor Dunn is reluctant to talk about what exactly caused their break-up in 2000 (Dunn is especially hesitant about the subject). For that matter, Dunn is reluctant to talk about Mr. Bungle in general, though he claims to have enough material for a book about the band (and enough unreleased songs for a companion album). He has stated that he will eventually release a book.

Gerald Cleaver
Although jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver has been known in the Detroit area as a great musician and educator since the early ’90s, he was not so well-known to listeners outside of the Midwest until an explosion of recordings released starting in 1999 brought his powerful and tasteful drumming to the attention of jazz listeners everywhere. Born and raised in Detroit, Cleaver became deeply involved with the jazz scene there, working with respected area musicians including bassist Ali Muhammad Jackson, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, tenor saxophonist Donald Walden, bassist Rodney Whitaker(on Hidden Kingdom), guitarist A. Spencer Barefield, reedsman Wendell Harrison, and many others. An NEA fellowship allowed Cleaver to study with drummer Victor Lewis; Cleaver then earned a music degree from the University of Michigan. During his years as a student, he had a band with keyboardist Craig Taborn called the Tracey Science Quartet. Cleaver went on to become a jazz educator after graduating and began teaching in Detroit in the early ’90s, later joining the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan. Splitting time between Detroit and N.Y.C., where he subsequently moved, Cleaver has worked with a long list of great jazz leaders including Roscoe Mitchell (notably on 1999’s Nine to Get Ready), Henry Threadgill, Jacky Terrasson, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Charles Gayle, Reggie Workman, and Eddie Harris, among others. Cleaver can be heard in a number of groups and settings, including the Joe Morris Quartet (with releases on Omnitone and Knitting Factory); the Matthew Shipp Quartet (Pastoral Composure); young bassist Chris Lightcap’s debut as a leader, Lay-Up; and vocalist René Marie’s Maxjazz release. Cleaver has been active with such additional groups as the Roscoe Mitchell Trio; Bishop Cleaver Flood (featuring Ann Arbor reedsman Andrew Bishop and bassist Tim Flood); David Torn’s Prezens; and his own sextet, Gerald Cleaver’s Veil of Names, which includes guitarist Ben Monder, violinist/violist Mat Maneri, bassist Reid Anderson, saxophonist Andrew Bishop, and former college collaborator Craig Taborn. Adjust was released in 2001 on FSNT (Fresh Sound New Talent), which also released Gerald Cleaver’s Detroit in 2008. Farmers by Nature, with William Parker and Craig Taborn, appeared from Aum Fidelity in 2009.

Booklet for Thee They Thy