Steve Bernstein ResoNation Trio

“Arranger, composer, brass maniac, and musical alchemist Steven Bernstein is an all-purpose gift to human ears. If you’re a living soul who has ever felt your foot tap or your bottom swing side-to-side because of, say, Ray Charles or Little Feat or Louis Armstrong, then you owe it to yourself to get Bernstein-ized. His musical net is wider than that, but let’s start there.” – Will Layman, PopMatters

Few artists exult in the joyous exhilaration and intrepid spirit of communal music-making with the fervor and vitality of visionary bandleader, trumpeter, composer and arranger Steven Bernstein. With a breathtaking pair of intimately interrelated new albums, he applies that bold passion to an uncharacteristically pared-down setting, then transforms those stunning sounds via a startling process of sonic reinvention. The results are conjoined musical twins showcasing two radically different takes on the same radiant material.

ResoNation Trio convenes a new chordless trio with master improvisers Scott Colley on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The album’s contemplative explorations feel like a departure from the raucous spirit that characterizes so much of the trumpeter’s work, yet the trio discovers such an audacious beauty and celebratory gusto in these sparse environments that the music feels uniquely Bernstein’s. . It is also a rarity in his oeuvre for featuring Bernstein – whose mastery of the little-used slide trumpet has become so central to his sonic identity – exclusively playing valve trumpet and flugelhorn.

In parallel with this captivating trio excursion, Bernstein handed the recordings over to his longtime collaborator, the pioneering producer Scotty Hard, to reimagine the album through his own iconoclastic lens. The result is the uncategorizable Ultra Resonance, which finds Hard breaking down the ResoNation Trio session into its constituent parts and redeploying them as the elements of a wholly original, mutant creation. The project released on June 5, 2026 via Royal Potato Family as a double vinyl or CD package containing both albums, and separately on digital streaming platforms.

With ResoNation Trio, Bernstein remains committed to finding fresh territory to explore in his own singular fashion. The sparse instrumentation of trumpet, bass and drums yields a journey just as fascinating and unique as any he’s crafted in the past. With the inspiration of that trio format came the insistence on calling Colley and Waits, who Bernstein first heard playing with the legendary pianist Andrew Hill. The project also reignited his long-nurtured desire to explore a remix or dub-style retranslation of abstract improvisational music – a treatment typically accorded to more familiar pop music, making the prospect thrillingly unpredictable.