Ghost Runner - Nucleus
Channel: Julian Berke
Date: 2019-04-27

Recorded March 15, 2013.
Julian Berke, piano.
Nick Alvarez, drums.

Ghost Runner was a Chicago-based musical project active from around 2007 through 2016. It was conceived by pianist/composer Julian Berke specifically as an acoustic duo collaboration with drummer/percussionist Nick Alvarez. Although rooted in jazz, free and non-idiomatic improvisation, contemporary classical music, conceptual sound art, and experience in the Chicago music community, the project functioned as a true experiment for composition, concepts, and abstract organizations of ideas without linear interpretations or outcomes. Initially formed as an incubator for studio recordings, its evolution soon shifted to a focus on live performances. 

Earlier Ghost Runner compositions tended to begin with a pre-organized conceptual structure that would have open-ended results. Later pieces like this one took almost the opposite approach - beginning with improvisation and little to no discussion (both players focusing on specific ideas or techniques), with subsequent replication i.e. many repeated takes to identify the structure, or form, or pertinent idea(s).

Nucleus: Eventually, we find life experience takes us quite far from where we began. We cannot look back, and yet we sometimes find we need to form some foundation, even a temporal one, to keep from getting lost entirely. The piano holds onto a single chord, and the percussion to a propulsive bass drum beat.