Capatosta Trio

Capatosta Trio comes to The Jazz Gallery for a set of improvised, avant-garde jazz built around alto saxophonist Tim Berne’s compositions. The New York trio is identified elsewhere as Berne with guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi and drummer Tom Rainey. Their pieces are not fixed objects: the group reworks and reinvents them in performance, following dense melodic lines as the rhythm and guitar continually reshape the music.

Berne is a New York saxophonist whose Capatosta has been described by critic Hank Shteamer as his “main vehicle,” a band with “telepathic chemistry” and “its own diverse palette.” Rainey is a long-running Berne collaborator, while Belisle-Chi is a rising New York guitarist and a more recent associate. Berne and Rainey previously played together in the guitar-led Big Satan with Marc Ducret, and Berne has also worked with guitarists Bill Frisell and Nels Cline. Writers describe Capatosta’s sound as “tense as it is electric”; another account hears the trio developing Berne’s complex music “with audible ease,” combining melody, rhythm, and improvisational energy into a “concentrated, intense band sound.”