For saxophonist and composer Tim Byrne, Brooklyn bar Roland is a favorite neighborhood hangout. These days, it also serves as his musical laboratory.
For the past two years, Byrne has regularly walked the block and a half from her home in Gowanus to her cozy store on a quiet street on Third Avenue. Tall, with his slow steps and gray hair, he blends in easily. Without a stage, he and his bandmates, a rotating cast of newcomers and longtime associates, were set up on the floor surrounded by purple Christmas lights and an illuminated Miller High Life sign.
Passersby may be expecting live classic rock covers, but that changes once Byrne warms up. His alto sound is chiselled, neon-bright, and cuts through space like a laser beam. This is one of the truest thought leaders in progressive jazz, a man who has been a modest but undeniable force on the music world for more than 40 years, and who, as he celebrates his 70th birthday on Wednesday, remains one of the best. It’s an instant reminder that you’re operating on power. (He returns to Roland on October 22nd.)
“A gig at Roland, he takes it as seriously as he takes playing Carnegie Hall,” guitarist Bill Frisell, who was a frequent collaborator with Burn in the ’80s and is back on track, said in a video interview. spoke. “It’s like his life is in danger.”
Mr. Frizell said he did not closely monitor Byrne’s music after their early work together. “I listened to him again, and I was like, ‘Man is alive,’” he continued, “and how that initial germ of an idea blossomed and expanded. And his sense of every part became richer and richer: melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint.
Active since the mid-’70s, Byrne emerged alongside John Zorn and other luminaries of New York’s so-called downtown scene, but he has carved out an unusual path. He wrote a wealth of music, packed with visceral thrills despite elaborate sonic geometries, and performed it with numerous bands, some of which later became internationally renowned. This includes musicians who have become stars of cutting-edge jazz.
Although he briefly recorded for a major label in the ’80s and released four albums on the acclaimed jazz label ECM in the 2010s, he has worked independently for much of his career. After starting two boutique labels, Empire and Screwgun, he now works for a variety of smaller labels and has been putting out a steady stream of new and archival albums through his Bandcamp page, with his name in the title. reflects his dry wit. Recent releases include “Live in Someplace Nice.” A 1984 live duo with Frisell and early 2000s standout band Science Friction’s “No Tamales on Wednesday,” and a cover he shot on his iPhone.
“I’m not an artist. I just play music,” he says a few hours before a show at Roland in June, sitting at a table in his sunny living/dining room, wearing a baggy blue He said he was wearing a shirt and his face was dotted with salt and pepper stubble. He explained that he didn’t want to feel like “I’m performing for you and I’m a different species than you,” his voice heavy with disdain for pretense. “That’s why I like hanging out at bars.”
Friend and fan Branford Marsalis praised the way Byrne stripped his creative life down to its essentials. “As players or jazz musicians or anyone outside of popular culture, we spend so much time imitating popular culture,” he said in a phone interview. “He never got caught up in that nonsense. If you find like-minded people who want to play and play, a show is a show.”
Growing up in Syracuse, New York, Byrne absorbed Stax and Motown records from one brother and avant-garde jazz from another. As a teenager, he frequently traveled to jazz clubs in New York. He picked up a saxophone in college at Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon, and impulsively bought an Alto while on hiatus from a basketball injury. With friends with similar interests, he jammed outdoors near the river, dropping acid and drawing inspiration from the collective explorations of groups like the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
“I could barely play, but I know something was going on,” he recalled.
An important discovery came through the 1972 LP Dogon AD by Texas-born multi-instrumentalist and composer Julius Hemphill. The album struck a rare balance between spontaneous expression and inventive structure, with a taut undercurrent of groove. Byrne’s work. Byrne called the album “a perfect fusion of soul music and avant-garde jazz”.
Byrne moved to New York in 1974, shortly after Hemphill, and quickly fell into his orbit. Hemphill became Byrne’s teacher and eventually his roommate in a downtown Brooklyn loft. “I was bringing in these little songs,” Byrne recalled. “And he never said, ‘You can barely play, you can’t play.'” Don’t write music. ”
“Other people would say, ‘Oh, hey,'” he added. But Hemphill “took me seriously.”
Byrne took a cue from Hemphill, who ran his own label, and began recording his own work, so the DIY approach never seemed like an “act of desperation.” In fact, I was like, “What a great idea.” ” While making a living playing daytime gigs at bagel stores and various record stores, Byrne self-released albums on Empire in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
His childhood friend guitarist Gary Lucas, who was working at Columbia Records at the time, got him a contract there. Byrne debuted on the Fulton Street Mall label in 1987 and has made significant strides. “This album is a great choice both for Mr. Byrne’s music (alternating wild and woolly, intimate and thoughtful in roughly equal proportions) and for the fact that it was released on Columbia Records, a major label that rarely issues , a huge event, “very uncompromising music,” John Pareles wrote in the New York Times.
Although the partnership with Columbia fizzled out after one album, it gave Byrne a strong foundation and began an ongoing collaboration with artist and designer Steve Byram. Byram’s fascinating and exuberant work adorns the walls of the Barn and most of his releases since then. “He’s one of the most creative people I know,” Byrum said before a Roland show at the Barn in September. “And he’s fearless in that respect as well.”
That spirit has proven to be highly influential. His band currently includes saxophonist Chris Speed and drummer Jim Black (both members of Byrne’s ’90s quartet Bloodcount) and keyboardist Craig Taborn (who played in Science Friction). His band includes several generations of up-and-coming improvisational composers. Hard Sell) and Snake Oil member Matt Mitchell, who played his final show last week.
Aurora Kneeland, a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist who frequently works with Byrne, says, “Incorporating musicians into my music who I consider creative and inquisitive allows me to be more myself.” “We have a way of encouraging it.” Taborn said Byrne “just wants to continually surprise.” Mitchell agreed. “Even if something went really well live, he doesn’t want you to recreate it,” he said. “He wants the opposite.”
At Roland’s September show, Greg Belisle-Chee, a 30-something guitarist whom Byrne hired in 2020 after seeing him cover Byrne’s work on Instagram, was behind many of Byrne’s best songs. He performed a new song alongside drummer Tom Rainey, who is in his 60s. A group that has been around for decades. In between songs, Byrne deadpanned and joked. “Let me tell you about the money situation,” he said, pointing to an empty beer pitcher that doubled as a donation container. “It’s a pretty bad situation.”
Later in the set, another musician walked through the bar and placed his horn case behind the band. He chuckled at Bern, who was holding up his tenor saxophone, and stepped into the choppy flow already in progress. It was Chris Potter, a great saxophonist who lives across the street from Bern and who I often hang out with at Roland.
At home before that night’s performance, Byrne marveled at the fact that world-class musicians regularly attend these paid neighborhood shows. “People are like Scott Colley,” he says, adding that the famed bassist, who made a guest appearance in early June, “was like, ‘When can we do our next show at Roland?’ “It was,” he suggested.
“For me, that’s a success,” he added. “People want to hang out with you at the bar.”
