Chris Bernhardt/ Brian Burke Holiday Show

April 2017

The band has recorded seven selections so far for their next studio release. It is being recorded sporadically when all four original members are in town . The band is planning two releases from the sessions, a full length selection that features the groups originals, and a second ep that will focus on the early 80's pop scene .

December 2016

BMR4's Chris Bernhardt and Jason Moynihan, along with John Hanrahan, and John Kattke, performed the jazz classic A Love Supreme by John Coltrane in Chicago as well along the West Coast, including the world famous Yoshi's in Oakland. Previously the band performed the piece at The Monterrey Jazz Festival in 2015.

July 14, 2015

BMR4 members Chris Bernhardt and Neal Alger played the Grateful Dead music festivities that occurred Saturday, July 4th at the Field Museum. Bernhardt with Jazz Plays Dead, and Alger with the Marlene Rosenberg Project. This was in conjunction with the Fare Thee Well farewell shows.

January 2, 2015

The Thomas Loop Radio Show out of New York played an unreleased BMR4 track, "Persuasion", in a recent podcast. (It's about 40 minutes into the show.)

August 2, 2011

Fixing A Hole ep now streaming on Rhapsody and Last FM, and of course BMR4 radio on Pandora.

A very nice review from the Gapplegate guitar and bass blog. Thanks very much!

November 3, 2010

We know some of you buy your music only digitally now in the age of mp3's. But we don't want to you to miss noted critic Neil Tesser's liner notes which are in the cd of Fixing A Hole. Besides being informative, entertaining, and hip, it also provides a back story for the recording and release of this ep. Enjoy, and thanks so much for support over the years

Welcome to the debut recording by the BMR4. Recorded in 2004, it should not be confused with the BMR4's debut release, which they recorded in 2006. It will, or course, do just that – be mistaken for the band's second album, even though they recorded it first. (That's how people are, and we'll all just have to live with it.)

Let's review.

Actually, this first recording, which nobody's heard, was directly responsible for the second recording, which came out several years later. "These were the demos that got us our deal with Hallway," says Chris Bernhardt. Bernhardt is the electric bassist and leader of this canny but uncompromising Chicago quartet; and Hallway was the label that released the band's Turning Point (their de facto debut album) in 2007.

Listening to these tracks now, Bernhardt admits, "They're a little rough. And in the time since they were recorded, the band has grown immensely, as individuals and as a unit. But I still think these tracks have a charm to them. There's no constraint in terms of performance time or the need to be 'commercial.' In a way, they remind me of those Impulse recordings of the 1960s – it's just four tunes that create a mood and go for it."

Bernhardt thinks of this music as his "Cassavetes phase."

Movie mavens will recognize both the name and the reference: John Cassavetes, the infamously iconoclastic director who, in the 60s and 70s, created a skein of tough, realistic, often depressing, and wildly individualistic films, which drew raves from some critics and pretty much just confused everyone else. "He turned off a lot of people, but he made his own movies, which were often ridiculed at the time," Bernhardt explains. "He mortgaged his house to make these films. He just wouldn't compromise, and I admire that kind of person. At the time we recorded these tunes, I'd been compromising my whole life, so I figured – Why not just put out something I want?"

Bernhardt's compromises have been of the kind made by most working musicians: playing society jobs and ax-for-hire gigs – background music for those temporarily cast as the stars of their own wedding, or bar mitzvah, or whatever. Once he'd decided to bust out on his own terms, he pulled together an unrestricted collection of favorites: one Beatles tune, one reworked jazz standard, and slightly arcane jazz classics from Gil Evans and Herbie Hancock – the tunes he wanted to play, audience concerns notwithstanding.

But the work of the BMR4 will have a far easier time locating its audience than did the films of Cassavetes. That's because their music still rewards the casual listener even as it challenges the more experienced members of the audience.

Part of this has to do with repertoire. Most people don't know a song like "The Maze," which snuck in behind "Watermelon Man" on Hancock's debut as a leader, Takin' Off. As a result, they'll hear something "new" (even though Hancock wrote and recorded the song in nearly 50 years ago). Yet those already familiar with this smart, meaty line will still get something different from the BMR4 recording, which replaces the original hard-bop lineup – horns, piano, bass, and drums – with a sleek, modernist instrumentation.

Those instruments, and the individuals who play them, add to this band's contemporary appeal. With drummer Mike Rodbard, Bernhardt creates a sleek, easygoing swing, broken here and there by clusters of rhythmic turmoil. In the front line, saxist Jay Moynihan plays with a rough-hewn style and fervent tone that push hard against the urban cool of guitarist Neal Alger. Alger, one of Chicago's busiest guitarists, has a particular talent for accompanying vocalists: he spent several years in Patricia Barber's band, which seems to have only sharpened his taste for rich, lush harmonies.

Perhaps most important, while the members of this band play jazz, they think like rock musicians. They can hardly help it: they've all played both idioms throughout their careers. Bernhardt knows full well the value of this training, and the versatility it affords his band. "Coming from a rock background is one thing that puts us ahead of a lot of other jazz bands," he continues. "We really know how to play to an audience. And from my background, I've also learned something about song selection. So since I was getting into jazz really late, I related my other experiences to my audience – how much they're listening on a given night, how much they know about jazz."

It also helps that the BMR4 plays a lot of songs rooted in blues and r-and-b. Music by James Brown jostles up against familiar tunes from Steely Dan or the Beatles; up-tempo modal jazz tunes from the 60s share space with moody, atmospheric pieces straight out of a movie soundtrack; and the infectious groove of John Scofield's music practically defines the BMR4 approach. "It's music the general audience can relate to," says Bernhardt, "but jazz folks like us too."

The BMR 4 evolved from a blues-rock band called The Buzz, which Bernhardt founded in the late 90s. (BMR = Bernhardt, Moynihan, Rodbard.) Rodbard, a graduate of DePaul University's School of Music, had already established himself as a respected drummer in a variety of styles; he eventually hooked up with the internationally acclaimed Lonnie Brooks Blues Band, with whom he continues to perform. Moynihan, who got his degree from the Berklee College of Music, moved to Chicago in the mid-90s and soon joined the bands led by blues stars Buddy Guy and Robert Cray.

As The Buzz, these three recorded a couple of independent albums and led the "Blue Monday" jams at Legends (the Chicago club owned by Buddy Guy). "But we were too eclectic," says Bernhardt, explaining why the band never broke onto a big label: "we couldn't be pinned down." And along the way, Bernhardt developed an interest in jazz, at which point he thought of an old friend, Neal Alger – "not because he was a hot guitarist (which he is), but because I'd known him so long." Bernhardt and Alger had met growing up in the Chicago suburbs, and in their teens did some jamming on rock and blues; as Bernhardt puts it, "I've been playing with Neal since before I could even play jazz." Alger provided the last piece of the puzzle; unfortunately, Bernhardt couldn't figure how to add the guitarist's initial to the band's name. (Hence BMR – 4. "It didn't flow as good with the 'A' in there," he says.)

Alger's monogram may not fit into a phrase that rolls off the tongue. But his contribution provides the essential ingredient for a band that's pretty easy on the ear – while maintaining a level of musicianship that's good for the soul. Bernhardt has some other projects in mind –a more rock-oriented studio date; an anthology of "live" recordings showcasing vocalists who have worked with the band – but it's the recordings on this disc that show the BMR4 in its purest, unadulterated form.

Too bad John Cassavetes isn't around. The music might fit nicely in his films.

NEIL TESSER - Examiner

November 28, 2009

The BMR4 will be featuring a new service for our fans: The BMR4 Quarterly. Every few months I'll write about BMR4 news you can use (stupid cliche,) including upcoming projects, shows, and general thoughts on the state of affairs of the music biz, which is generally dismal at best...

So it's the end of November, the holidays are in full swing, and the year is coming to a close.

All in all, it was a good year for BMR4. We've done a bunch of cool gigs all over the area, and have had some fine moments as a group. No doubt, the solid gold dancers at the Halsted Market Days festival will register as highlight numero uno (at least for yours truly.)

What we've got left is going to send out 2009 with quite a bang. Among other things, we'll conclude our Thursday night residency at Andy's Jazz Club, with performances on the first 3 Thursdays of December. Those gigs are always a blast, and we look forward to it every time.

December 9 is certainly a date to circle on the old calendar (do people still use those? besides me, I mean?) We'll be performing a special concert in honor of the late Master, John Coltrane at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago. It is the 45th anniversary of the release of the legendary "A Love Supreme" album, and we're going to give our homage and interpretation of the record (wish us luck! a bold challenge, for sure.) We'll also be performing other Coltrane favorites that have come through email requests (if you haven't made one yet, there's still time.)

This, proudly, will be our first time at the Showcase, so we hope that you can make it out for that one. It's a FREE concert, and sponsored by WDCB, 90.9 FM, College of DuPage (special thanks to Ken Scott for the continued support of BMR4 and live jazz in Chicago.)

With that, we've got 2010 ahead of us. 10 years of BMR4. That's a long time. So what does a decade old band do?

New stuff, of course!

We did a record a few years ago that we never released. It was to be called Fixin' a Hole, with that tune (yes, the Beatles' tune) as the lead track. Back then we were, um, how shall I put it, broke. We couldn't put it out, nor could we get someone to do it with/for us. But that was then, and this is now, and we think that we should be able to do something with it. This will most likely be released as a digital download only. We're thinking about doing that so that you can hear new stuff, and we can spend the time to do it all right.

And by the way, we're still less than flush, so if there are any patrons of the arts out there...

ahem, anyways...

We've also got a few things cooking in terms of recording new material. It's been about 2 years since we released Turning Point, we've finally broken even on the project, and so it's time for something fresh (not that you shouldn't pick up another copy or 2 as a worthy stocking stuffer for that special someone.)

We've been writing some stuff, we've been talking about other tunes we'd like to tackle, and we're just about at that point of getting that proverbial ball rolling. There's been some talk among us that maybe a few guests will join us on the record. We've worked with a lot of great players over the years, so that might be something for us to consider.

Last but not least (another stupid cliche. ugh!), we've gotten together all of our recordings from the Morse Theater shows that we did in the beginning of the year. There were six performances at the now defunct venue (too bad, it was really nice,) and we were fortunate enough to have had them all recorded. We got a lot of good material covered, with some very good performances. There's certainly a record in there somewhere (it's something like 19 hours worth of music- including sound checks, some of which weren't half bad.) We shall see what we come up with. Stay tuned!

Of course, the band would like to give a special thanks to the vocalists who participated on the shows with us: Lisa Roti, Allison Ruble, Nicole Kestler, Typhanie Monique, and Petra van Nuis. You all did a fabulous job.

No matter what, though, live music IS best! Please continue to support it wherever you are.

June 24, 2007

Tracks from "Turning Point" have received over 350 spins on radio stations across the country. All ten tracks from the release have been played, which speaks to the quality of the recording.

"Turning Point" is available at retail Best Buy stores. If you can't find it in the Jazz section, it's probably under "Easy Listening". Barry Manillow we are not, but that's where they have been found. We've tried to rectify the situation, but there's much red tape involved.

March 13, 2007

Turning Point is now available at the iTunes Music Store. Buy It Now

Turning Point CD Release Party!

Come Celebrate Our Label Debut "Turning Point" On Hallway Records on Saturday, March 10, 2007, 9:00 pm at Andy's Jazz Club