Funky, jazzed, and trippy, Tinctures in Time is the first of four albums scheduled for release over a year’s time from trumpeter, composer, arranger, and band leader Steven Bernstein. Featuring his Millennial Territory Orchestra, a nonet comprising some of New York’s finest musicians, the album’s groove-based tinctures blend jazz, funk, rock, minimalism, and African influences to deliver a welcome lift to the spirit.

Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra
Tinctures in Time (Community Music, Vol. 1) (Symphonic)
A review
Steven Bernstein’s Tinctures in Time invites you to get a little lost. Built on layered grooves, the album pulls you in with its irresistible rhythmic currents and carries you through morphing melodies splashed with unexpected instrumental colors. It’s a trip, and one worth taking.

Bernstein calls it “cannabis music” and places it in the tradition of trance music, which creates “an altered state that you can kind of lose yourself in,” he says. The jazz of the 1920s had its “viper music,” which celebrated the qualities of marijuana—e.g., Louis Armstrong’s “Muggles” and Fats Waller’s “Viper Drag”—and Tinctures in Time might be considered an evolutionary descendant of that music. Composed for the most part in 2019, a difficult year for Bernstein, who suffered the loss of his friend and collaborator Henry Butler and encountered death and serious injuries in his immediate family, Tinctures in Time also references the medical adage “tincture of time,” which acknowledges that some things need time to heal—altered slightly to give a nod to Sly Stone’s funky “In Time,” a Bernstein favorite.

Bernstein builds grooves layer by layer—check out the opening of “Show Me Your Myth”—and then allows those layers to play off one another. A layer that is holding the foreground for a period of time might slowly shift places with a background layer, turning your attention upside down. New layers get added, along with fresh timbral characteristics, and others dissolve (sometimes reappearing later, clothed in different instrumentation), and occasionally they’ll play call-and-response with one another, so there is a continual stream of alteration even as the groove itself holds steady. But not too steady. You won’t get too lost in a groove as there are surprises planted along the way that will bring you back to yourself and redirect you.

Bernstein, like Ellington, has the luxury of writing for a group of musicians whom he has worked with for years and whose strengths and propensities he knows intimately. They, in turn, know his Bernsteinisms and are able to deliver coherent—make that, inspired—performances in short order. How else could you record four albums in four days? Each of the tracks was rehearsed for about 45 minutes, and then two takes were done live. That is what you hear, a live performance untouched by electronic wizardry. The sound is vivid, chewy, a testament to the skills of the recording engineer and masterer, as well as the arranging skills of Bernstein, who knows how to rub timbres against one another to bring out each instrument’s distinctive character.

The eight tracks are all Bernstein originals—a first for this aggregation, which has made its name bringing to life Bernstein’s arrangements of other people’s music. There’s genuine pathos that threads through much of the album, no doubt generated by the difficulties Bernstein was experiencing in 2019 as he was writing the music, and it’s brought to a deeply soulful head in the third track, “Angels,” which brings Bernstein’s plaintive trumpet front and center.

The arranger takes pains to give all his players the spotlight and enough rope to swing any way they want, and they turn in arresting performances. Some of note include guitarist Matt Munisteri on the opener, “Planet B,” Doug Wieselman’s clarinet on “Quart of Relativity,” Eric Lawrence’s bari sax on the chill groove of “The Gift,” Peter Apfelbaum’s tenor on “Satori Slapdown,” and Curtis Fowlkes’ trombone and Charles Burnham’s wah-wah violin on “High Light.”

The Millennial Territory Orchestra includes
Steven Bernstein (trumpet, slide trumpet, flugelhorn)
Curtis Fowlkes (trombone)
Charlie Burnham (violin)
Doug Wieselman (clarinet, tenor saxophone)
Peter Apfelbaum (tenor saxophone)
Eric Lawrence (baritone saxophone)
Matt Munisteri (guitar, banjo)
Ben Allison (bass)
Ben Perowsky (drums)

Tinctures in Time invites you to get lost, and in the process, you just might find your groove and return to yourself refreshed, grateful, and a little funkier than you were before. Find it on Bandcamp. You can also find the Community Music sampler there, which includes one track from each of the four albums and is reviewed here.

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© 2021 Mel Minter