Josh Berman



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Josh Berman is a cornetist, improviser, composer, and music presenter. An essential contributor to Chicago’s active free jazz and improvised music scene, his work encompasses performing in a variety of highly collaborative formats, while also creating performance opportunities for musicians, having produced hundreds of shows in Chicago over the past 25 years. He has participated in over 40 recordings, with his own projects, Old Idea, Josh Berman and his Gang, and Josh Berman Trio receiving critical acclaim in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, DownBeat and many other publications. His recordings can be found on Chicago’s legendary Delmark Records, Austin’s Astral Spirits Records and most recently on Corbett Vs Dempsey.

The Bridge #15

Sunday | 18 November 2018
Milwaukee | Woodland Pattern - 7:00pm


Alternating Currents Live presents The Bridge #15


featuring Josh Berman (cornet), Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Didier Petit (cello), & Edward Perraud (drums)

“One of way of speaking about the just excesses of any improvised music, which by nature make light of balance and imbalance, of stability and instability, would be to invoke another duality: that of reverence and irreverence. Because, passionately or soberly, soberly and passionately, each musician in this Bridge ensemble—the fifteenth, and the last of this cycle to start its journey—summons in his own way the resources of the most unbridled expressiveness or wholesome theatrics. Let’s mention, incidentally: about Didier Petit, that he is the world’s first cellist to have truly played his instrument in zero-gravity conditions, in the stratosphere, after thousands of attempts on this planet’s surface; about Jason Stein, that he is one of the very few improvisers to have lit a bass-clarinet-shaped fire at the Madison Square Garden, opening for one of North America’s most famous stand-up comedians when he was not pursuing underground avenues; about Edward Perraud, that he is an acrobatic drummer and sassy showman with a gift for multiplying himself, and that he was also able to create in France unprecedented dialogues between music and spoken word; about Josh Berman, that he’s leading a perfectly balanced double life as a cornetist and child psychologist, and that he reinvented in his spare time the music of the Austin High School Gang. However, that’s not all. Their lives as musicians don’t boil down to these feats.

There’s no program in sight. Only the adventurous alertness of play and invention.”

–Alexandre Pierrepont, 2018