Thee They Thy is the second ECM album by Judith Berkson, mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer, improviser and cantor. It arrives sixteen years after her solo debut Oylam (2010), and this time she leads a piano trio with bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. The programme moves between original songs, new settings for prayer, vocal experiment, through-composed pieces and open improvisation. Jazz is the frame, but the harmonic and melodic material also comes from minimalism, the avant-garde and the synagogue.
On Oylam Berkson sang and played several keyboards alone. For the trio she wanted partners who would bring out new sides of her playing and her songwriting, and she sees the new pieces as a natural extension of that solo work. Cleaver, with whom she had played many times, has recorded for ECM since 1999, with leaders from Roscoe Mitchell to Craig Taborn. Dunn, known from Mr. Bungle and many projects with John Zorn, makes his ECM debut here. Speaking to Rock and Roll Globe, he described her writing as having a "stark and stoic approach" that shaped his own playing. The album was recorded in July 2021 at Oktaven Audio in Mount Vernon, New York, with Ryan Streber engineering and Manfred Eicher producing.
The opening Slow sets long held vocal notes against harmonies that rub against them, a quiet dissonance the trio never hurries to resolve. Torque, the longest track, is built on improvisation over twelve-tone rows, with Dunn anchoring the piece while Cleaver works beneath the surface. V'shamru is an original cantorial setting, and its most direct moment: Berkson's voice rises over modal piano and Dunn's bowed bass. The title track takes jazz scat apart, breaking a percussive vocal line into fragments that the three players pass between them. Cleaver has a short solo drum piece of his own, Cleav, and Slowly Walk Into It was freely improvised.
Critics have stressed how hard the record is to file. Writing in UK Vibe, Mike Gates heard it draw equally on jazz, song tradition and the avant-garde, and at times recall the more exploratory singer-songwriters of the 1970s. In Mojo, Andy Cowan called her pieces "highly unconventional, distinguished by her pliant, resonant voice and inimitable command of tone". For Kevin Le Gendre in Jazzwise, the ensemble dynamics are "as subtle as they are stark", with melodic themes and improvisation set over "a constant spiritual undercurrent".
This is the CD edition, ECM 2741, released in April 2026.
