Judith Berkson, Trevor Dunn, Gerald Cleaver
Biography Judith Berkson, Trevor Dunn, Gerald Cleaver
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.
