Tim Berne was born in Syracuse, New York in 1954, and was subjected to a perfectly normal childhood. But he didn’t decide to take up music until nearly twenty years later when he was attending Lewis and Clark College in Oregon, putting most of his energy into intramural basketball. At this point, while resting a sore ankle in his dormitory, Berne encountered a saxophonist who was selling his alto, and bought it on impulse. “There was just something about the sound of the saxophone that got to me,” he says.

Musically, up to that point, Berne had always been motivated by all types of music, but especially by the great Stax artists like Sam and Dave and Johnnie Taylor, as well as Motown artists like Martha and the Vandellas and Gladys Knight. This passion for the soulful quality in music would follow him for the rest of his career, a career that he could not possibly foreseen at the time. “I hadn’t listened to much jazz, but then I heard Julius Hemphill’s album Dogon A.D., and that completely turned me around. It captured everything I liked in music. It had this Stax/R&B sensibility and it had this other wildness. It was incredible. That’s when I started playing.”

Berne moved to New York in 1974, sought Hemphill out, and entered into a sort-of apprenticeship with the elder musician. The “lessons” they had together lasted for hours and covered everything from composition to record promotion to recording to pasting up handbills to aspects of magic and spirituality and, sometimes, even playing the saxophone. “From the beginning,” Berne says, “even while I was still learning to play the saxophone, Julius always encouraged me to write my own music as well. So it never occurred to me that most people don’t play their own music or aren’t bandleaders. I thought that was just part of it. You learn how to play music, you start a band, and that’s it. Julius didn’t offer me one system, but a lot of possibilities, with the emphasis always on ideas and sound.”

Berne began issuing his own albums on his own Empire label in 1979. Over the next five years he would record and distribute five albums under his own name which included such musicians as Ed Schuller, Olu Dara, Paul Motian, John Carter, Glenn Ferris and Bill Frisell. Following two recordings for the Italian Soul Note label, Berne recorded Fulton Street Maul and Sanctified Dreams for Columbia Records. These recordings coincided with an increasingly active worldwide touring schedule.

In 1988 Berne began a long relationship with the JMT label with the first of two recordings with the co-operative Miniature (with Joey Baron and Hank Roberts). In 1989 Berne’s JMT release Fractured Fairy Tales was hailed as a masterpiece by the New York Times.

Berne’s JMT legacy climaxed with the historic Paris Concerts given by his quartet bloodcount, released in three volumes (Lowlife, Poisoned Minds and Memory Select). These recordings have received unanimous praise. Since 1994, bloodcount has performed over 250 concerts worldwide.

In 1996 Berne once again founded his own record label, Screwgun, and released a three CD set of live recordings by bloodcount, Unwound. He also had a new string quartet, dry ink, silence, premiered by the Kronos Quartet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 1997 has found Berne touring the U.S. and Europe with bloodcount, writing music for large ensemble on commission, and preparing the next three Screwgun releases by his bands bloodcount and Paraphrase. In addition, a recording of The Visible Man, a piece commissioned in 1992 for the Rova Saxophone Quartet, has just been issued on a disc called The Works, Volume 2 on the Black Saint label.

Born in San Diego, CA and raised in Sacramento, Ches Smith began playing drums just in time to join a third rate prog/punk/psych/metal band early in high school. He studied philosophy at the University of Oregon before relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1995.

After a few years of playing with obscure punk rock bands and intensive study with drummer/educator Peter Magadini, he enrolled in the graduate program at Mills college in Oakland at the suggestion of percussionist William Winant.

There he studied percussion, improvisation, and composition with Winant, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran. One of Winant’s first “assignments” for Ches was to sub in his touring gig at the time, Mr. Bungle (here he met bassist/composer Trevor Dunn who would later hire him for the second incarnation of his Trio- Convulsant).During his time at Mills, Ches co-founded two bands: Theory of Ruin (with Fudgetunnel/Nailbomb frontman Alex Newport), and Good for Cows (w/Nels Cline Singers’ Devin Hoff).

He currently performs and records with Good for Cows, Xiu Xiu, Carla Bozulich, Secret Chiefs 3, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, Ben Goldberg, Annie Gosfield, and 7 Year Rabbit Cycle. He also leads his two of his own projects, Congs for Brums and These Arches. He currently spends his time in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Brooklyn.

Born in Amityville, NY in 1953 — the Year of the Horror — David Torn (aka, splattercell) is a guitarist, film-composer & producer, working with texture, high- contrast sound & spatiality & electronics in improvisational performance, music production & film-scoring since 1872.

Early life was filled with music & stories & electronic bits, his mother playing piano, radio always playing Motown whenever Broadway show-tunes & jazz weren’t playing on the old tube-driven stereo-system which his father had design-engineered for the Harman-Kardon company,

David took classical piano & drum lessons, until his mother gave him a nylon-string guitar; then, it was flamenco lessons, & soon after chord-melody playing. He was also enrolled in Leonard Bernstein’s “Music for Young Composers”-series.
Around 1973, David re-joined the Zobo Funn Band, an adventurous “underground” pan-idiomatic almost-pop group which became a 6-year-long, daily cooperative & a working foundation for his commitment to music. During that time, David also studied, primarily with one of his heroes, John Abercrombie, & also with Pat Martino.

In the fall/1979, he was invited by The Everyman Band to join with Don Cherry for just 10-days of Don’s 3-month-long European tour. After a concert or two, Don asked David to remain in the band for the rest of the tour; Don’s influence on David’s need to push the sound & role of his instrument to more personal & broader sonic regions was profound, especially in regards to improvisational “composition” & “re- orchestration”.

The importance of the musical & personal relationships with key people in David’s musical life are sometimes made obvious by time: many, many records with Manfred Eicher, with TIm Berne, 3+ records over 15 years with David Bowie, so much with Mick Karn, with Craig Street, so many records with Kurt Renker.

His own recordings include Best Laid Plans, Cloud about Mercury, Prezens & Only Sky (ECM), splattercell: OAH & remiksis (75 Ark), Tripping over God, What Means Solid, Traveller?, Polytown (CMP), Levin/Torn/White (LazyBones), DoorX (Windham Hill).

David’s contributive work has appeared on work with artists including Tim Berne, David Bowie, Jan Garbarek & Eberhard Weber, Jeff Beck, Mick Karn, David Sylvian, John Legend, Michael Formanek, Tori Amos, Madonna, Matt Mitchell, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jarboe, Laurie Anderson, Kaki King, kd lang, Chocolate Genius, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, Jennifer Maidman, Gerald Cleaver, Julie Slick, Samuel Hällkvist, Drew Gress, Harvey Valdes, etc.

His 1st studio film-score, “The Order”, was nominated for a Grammy award. His substantial contribution to “Traffic” created for a groundbreaking & influential sound in scoring for cinema. Among others, David composed the scores for “Friday Night Lights”, “Lars & The Real Girl”, “The Wackness”, “Everything Must Go”, “That Awkward Moment”, “Saint John of Las Vegas”, “The Line (La Linea)”.

David has also played a creative role in scores of other film-composers, including for films like “The Big Lebowski”, “No Country for Old Men”, “Twilight (1 & 4)”, “Reversal of Fortune”, “Love is the Devil”, “The Departed”, “Adaptation”, “Skins” etc.. He was invited to speak & perform at TEDx CalTech’s conference, “The Brain”. He’s conducted Master-Classes at California Institute of the Arts & The New School (NY), and other workshops in the USA, England, Sweden, Japan & Brazil; meanwhile, some rumors have it that he’s just a regular, strangely friendly character with a neurological twist or two, too.

David has also received at least a few fancy awards.