Sync in step in Finney show

Trio's performance shows strong rapport and improvisational flair

Every live performance should strive to be a kind of conversation. The voices of Ned Rothenberg, Samir Chatterjee and Jerome Harris came together on Tuesday night in Finney Chapel to achieve just that. The language spoken was a type of jazz-funk, in the unique accent of the trio known as SYNC.

The program began with Rothenberg on saxophone, summoning the audience with a haunting, primitive solo. Tabla virtuoso Chatterjee added a driving pulse and Jerome Harris followed shortly after with his amazing finger-picking acoustic guitar. For two full one-hour sets, these skilled conversationalists morphed radically yet seamlessly between textures and timbres.

"March Hair," a piece from their first CD, was a comical dialogue between instruments. With Rothenberg switching to bass clarinet and Harris to acoustic bass, the two taunted and teased the tabla in a unison riff. Before long, Harris began digressing and Chatterjee adopted Rothenberg's rhythm. While enter-taining the audience with visually flirtatious interactions, the group also supplied the listeners with a complex layering of voices. The polyphony progressively thickened as the performers improvised.

With a deceiving grin on his face, Chatterjee's hands slaved over the different tones capable on the tabla. The tabla is a pitched percussion set, with three drums tuned to C, E and G. One drum is often tuned to the dominant of the key to give a strong sense of the mode of the raga. This tone was, perhaps, too strong and played for too long in "FoFela/Misterioso," the last song before intermission; many heads began to droop. The second set proved much less static with songs like "The Hotel Lazard Cafe," and "Trip to the Bar," both from their latest CD with stellar solos from Rothenberg on shakuhachi.

Oberlin isn't just on their itinerary - which included a performance and masterclass with students - it's also on their resume. Ned Rothenberg graduated from the Conservatory 20 years ago.

Rothenberg has worked with numerous and various professional musicians, including percussionist Samm Bennett, guitarist Paul Dresher, composer John Zorn and vocalist Sainkho Namchylak. He has recorded on over a dozen labels and performed extensively throughout North and South America, Europe and Japan. His instrumental innovations have expanded the woodwind capacity via circular breathing, overtone control and percussive techniques on originally non-percussive instruments. His progressive ideas have shaped the medium of electronic music and his recordings reflect some of the most advanced sound technology for the time they were written.

As a composer, Rothenberg triumphs. In his collaboration with Paul Dresher for the 1991 CD "Opposites Attract," the two used a computor / sequencer to loop a phrase of music electronically to aid live instruments in improvisation. "From the outset, the [CD] was conceived as a marriage between two contrasting elements; the unique qualities of acoustic instrumental and improvised performance, and the detailed control, precision, and new compositional possibilities offered by rapidly evolving technology."

Although SYNC's show on Tuesday involved only kosher, amped but acoustic instruments, there was an element strikingly similar to Rothenberg's computor phase of the early 90s. As a culmination of Rothenberg's assorted experiences, SYNC is a remarkable representation of music.

"SYNC could best be compared to a trio of chefs, experienced in varying degrees in the different musical cuisines of the world," explains Rothenberg. "I look for meals to which we can each contribute ... the key to all this - we know the danger of 'too many chefs' - is band chemistry. Samir brings the skills of a world-class player of tabla, Jerome is extremely well versed in the song forms and rhythms based in the African-American tradition. Because of the depth and musical fluency of my two partners I am often the one trying to 'keep up.'"

SYNC's latest CD, "Port of Entry" was just released on the Intuition Music&Media label.