Steven Bernstein
& Sex Mob

Steven Bernstein is a trumpeter/slide trumpeter, bandleader, arranger, and composer who lives outside of musical convention. He has recently released three critically acclaimed CDs – Diaspora Soul, Diaspora Blues (featuring the SamRivers trio), and his most recent, Diaspora Hollywood. All three are on John Zorn’s Tzadik label.

His band Sex Mob has been together since 1995 touring the world. Sex Mob has won numerous awards, and has had their music featured on MTV, Saturday Night Live and NPR. Their most recent CD, Sexotica, was nominated for a Grammy in 2006 for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Their previous recording, Dime Grind Palace (Ropeadope), features legendary trombonist Roswell Rudd.

His nine-piece ensemble, the Millennial Territory Orchestra, recently released their debut recording, MTO Vol. 1 on Sunnyside records. MTO was formed in 1999 for a series of Midnight shows at Tonic, and spent a year and a half long residency at the Jazz Standard. Bernstein also arranged and co-produced Baby Loves Jazz, featuring vocalists Sharon Jones and Babi Floyd, along with keyboard master John Medeski. The CD is available on Verve records.

Bernstein was the musical director for I’m Your Man, a documentary on Leonard Cohen that focuses on a tribute concert held at the Sydney Opera house, it was released by Lions Gate films in spring 2006.

He recently filmed an hour long segment for Solos, a Canadian Television program featuring solo performances by musicians including Andrew Hill, Joe Lovano, and John Scofield. Bernstein was also the subject of a feature entitled Creative Spaces on NPR’s All Things Considered, and was interviewed by Terry Gross in 2002.

Since November 2004 Bernstein has been a member of the Levon Helm band, playing at the Midnight Rambles in Levon’s home in Woodstock. Bernstein wrote the horn arrangements for Bill Frissel’s Grammy winning 2004 recording Unspeakable, as well as for artists including Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Darlene Love, Elton John, and Marvin Pontiac.

In 1992, musical iconoclast Hal Willner produced the debut CD by Spanish Fly, a cooperative trio with Bernstein, slide guitarist Dave Tronzo and tubaist Marcus Rojas, and they have been collaborating ever since.

Bernstein has musical directed many Hal Willner projects, including tributes to Leonard Cohen, Doc Pomus, and Harold Arlen, and created the music for Robert Altman’s film Kansas City. He was also the musical director for the touring version of the Kansas City band, which included David “Fathead” Newman, Don Byron, James Carter, Christian McBride, and Nicholas Payton.

During his 10 years as a member of John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards he arranged the music for Get Shorty, Clay Pigeons, Fishing With John and many more film, television and commercial projects with Mr. Lurie.

For composer/Foetus mastermind Jim Thirwell, Bernstein arranged Steroid Maximus to be performed live by a 19 piece ensemble.
As a composer he has scored the documentaries Keep the River On Your Right, Balloonhat, and episodes for the Nickelodeon TV series “The Backyardigans”; as well as dance pieces for Alvin Ailey, Body Vox, the Donald Byrd Dance Company, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and the San Francisco Ballet, and numerous commercial jingles.

Bernstein has played trumpet with a diverse group of artists including Marianne Faithfull, Linda Ronstadt, David Murray, David Berger, Digable Planets, Sting, Medeski Martin and Wood, Courtney Love, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Don Byron and Mocean Worker. Awards include Downbeat critics poll 2006 (#1 RISING STAR ARRANGER, #4 RISING STAR TRUMPETER) Downbeat critics poll 2005 (#1 RISING STAR ARRANGER) Downbeat critics poll 2004 (#1 ARRANGER TDWR, #2 BIG BAND – MILLENNIAL TERRITORY ORCHESTRA), Jazz Journalists Association 2003 (RARE BRASS) and Downbeat Critics Poll 2002 (SEX MOB #1 BEYOND GROUP, #1 ACOUSTIC JAZZ GROUP TDWR).

Briggan Krauss

Saxophonist, electronic musician and composer Briggan Krauss began playing the alto saxophone and studying music at age twelve and eventually attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in music performance in 1992.  In 1994 Briggan moved to Brooklyn, New York where he still lives today.

Briggan has performed and recorded with musicians such as John Zorn, Wayne Horvitz, Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Robin Holcomb, Anthony Coleman, Steven Bernstein's "Sex Mob", Medeski Martin and Wood, Bobby Previte, Jim Black, Hal Willner, Joey Baron, the New York Composer’s Orchestra  and many others.
Briggan has made three records as a leader on Knitting Factory Records and has appeared on over thirty other records as a sideman.  He has been reviewed and interviewed in jazz and new music publications in the United States, Europe and Japan.  In recent  Downbeat Magazine Critic's Polls, ”Sex Mob” was awarded ”Best Beyond Band” and  ”Best Acoustic Jazz Band TWR” in 2002; and Briggan was named in the ”Alto Saxophone TWR” category in both 2002 and 2003.  The CD "Unspeakable" by guitarist Bill Frisell, on which Briggan appeared, won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2004.

”Good Kitty”, the first band in which Briggan was the leader, featured an unusual trio of himself on alto saxophone, clarinet/tenor saxophonist Chris Speed, and drummer Mike Sarin. Briggan recorded his first CD as a leader for Knitting Factory Records with ”Good Kitty” in 1995.

Briggan’s next recording project ”300” featured another trio which reunited Briggan with ”Pig Pen” leader Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, and added fellow ”Sex Mob” member Kenny Wollesen on drums.  Recording for the Knitting Factory record label in 1997, ”300” garnered notable critical acclaim for their self-titled debut recording culminating in making the ”Jazziz Magazine Critic’s Top-Ten recordings of 1998” list twice. 

While at Cornish College of the Arts, Briggan studied electronic music and advanced theory with composer/professor Jarrad Powell.    In 1999 ”Descending to End”, a solo studio project, was made over the course of nine months and received excellent reviews by the music press. 

As a composer, Briggan was commissioned by Roulette New York with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation to present a program of new music.  A mostly through composed chamber piece in eight parts, for eight musicians and conductor titled ”Lensing”, was premiered at Roulette in April 2002.
Briggan continues to work with electronic music.  He has released the CDs ”Object #1” and "Object#2" which are the first in a series of releases each dedicated and inspired by the work of a particular visual artist.  He has also begun working with live electronics in several duo and trio settings with the likes of Wayne Horvitz, Jim Black, Skuli Sverrisson and others in addition to a series of collaborations with the visual artist Raha Raissnia which all fall under the title "Systems".

Tony Scherr

Since coming to New York in the 80s, Tony Scherr has become one of the city's most prolific and in-demand sidemen, playing itegral roles in the music of such notable artists as Bill Frisell, John Lurie (Lounge Lizards), Steve Bernstein (Sex Mob), and Norah Jones, as well as some of New York's better-kept secrets, such as Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos, The Wollesens, Ursa Minor, and Slowpoke. Tony has recorded most of these latter artists at his Brooklyn home studio, helping to foster and document a tight-knit, intimate scene of players who are as skilled and daring as they are broadminded and modest.

Originally hailing from New Haven, CT, Tony played rock guitar in a garage band with his brother Peter as teens, before the two went their seperate ways -- Peter to become a concert bassist and film composer, and Tony to slug it out in the clubs of New York, ironically as primarily a bassist himself. His debut album Come Around is a reunion of sorts, between the two brothers, between Tony and the electric guitar, and between the brothers and the rock/song idiom. The lyrical content in particular also charts a deeply personal journey, documenting a process of overcoming catastrophe and a renewed faith in the healing power of music. Above all else, the album serves as a message of hope.

Kenny Wollesen

Drummer Kenny Wollesen performed on over 30 recordings during the 1990s and, as the decade progressed, gained increasing renown as a musician of astonishing versatility, skill, and ingenuity. He has recorded and toured with all kinds of musicians, from Tom Waits (Wolleson performs on Waits' 1993 collaboration with William S. Burroughs, Black Rider), to Sean Lennon, to Ron Sexsmith (Wollesen performs on his second album, Other Songs).

A founding member of the New Klezmer Trio, Wollesen is also all over N.Y.C.'s downtown jazz and avant-garde musicians' recordings, and has been so active as to tour with Bill Frisell and Myra Melford in the same month. — Joslyn Layne Better than anybody before or since, Kenny Wollesen blended a modern percussionist's drive and eclecticism with an insider's respect for the nineteenth-century klezmer vocabulary. With Kenny on the sticks in 1987 and '88, The Klezmorim had the chops to achieve a funky 1910 street-band groove, and the confidence to fuse klezmer with rock and jazz.

Wollesen stands out as a drummer's drummer -- playing masterfully but loose, peppering the beat with a mulligatawney stew of musical ideas.