Judith Berkson: Thee They Thy (ECM 2741)

Judith BerksonThee They Thy Judith Berkson voice, pianoTrevor Dunn double bassGerald Cleaver drumsRecorded July 2021Oktaven Audio StudioMount Vernon, NYEngineer: Ryan StreberCover: Fidel SclavoMastering: Christoph StickelAlbum produced by Manfred EicherRelease date: April 24, 2026 Mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer, and improviser Judith Berkson returns to ECM with a compelling new trio project. Conceptual art, liturgical inquiry, chamber abstraction, and jazz formalism: each arrives carrying its own gravity, yet none bends submissively toward a central identity. To call Berkson “multifaceted” feels insufficient, flat in a way her music refuses to be. These practices do not orbit a core. They are neighboring rooms illuminated at different hours of the day. If her 2010 solo album Oylam fashioned a private syntax from fractured song, Thee They Thy inhabits the classical jazz trio format as though entering an ancestral home whose walls still remember fire. Longtime associate Gerald Cleaver…