duo album release: resonation trio and ultra resonsance from the compound of scotty hard & steven bernstein

Wildly adventurous trumpeter/composer Steven Bernstein pairs the debut of his acoustic, explorative ResoNation Trio with a startling reinvention by eclectic producer Scotty Hard 

Out June 5, 2026 via Royal Potato Family, ResoNation Trio features Bernstein in a rare outing solely on valve trumpet with bassist Scott Colley and drummer Nasheet Waits  

Companion record Ultra Resonance finds longtime collaborator Scotty Hard wholly reimagining the trio’s music 

“Arranger, composer, brass maniac, and musical alchemist Steven Bernstein is an all-purpose gift to human ears. If you’re a living soul who has ever felt your foot tap or your bottom swing side-to-side because of, say, Ray Charles or Little Feat or Louis Armstrong, then you owe it to yourself to get Bernstein-ized. His musical net is wider than that, but let’s start there.” – Will Layman, PopMatters

 
Few artists exult in the joyous exhilaration and intrepid spirit of communal music-making with the fervor and vitality of visionary bandleader, trumpeter, composer and arranger Steven Bernstein. With a breathtaking pair of intimately interrelated new albums, he applies that bold passion to an uncharacteristically pared-down setting, then transforms those stunning sounds via a startling process of sonic reinvention. The results are conjoined musical twins showcasing two radically different takes on the same radiant material.
 
ResoNation Trio convenes a new chordless trio with master improvisers Scott Colley on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The album’s contemplative explorations feel like a departure from the raucous spirit that characterizes so much of the trumpeter’s work, yet the trio discovers such an audacious beauty and celebratory gusto in these sparse environments that the music feels uniquely Bernstein’s. . It is also a rarity in his oeuvre for featuring Bernstein - whose mastery of the little-used slide trumpet has become so central to his sonic identity - exclusively playing valve trumpet and flugelhorn.
 
In parallel with this captivating trio excursion, Bernstein handed the recordings over to his longtime collaborator, the pioneering producer Scotty Hard, to reimagine the album through his own iconoclastic lens. The result is the uncategorizable Ultra Resonance, which finds Hard breaking down the ResoNation Trio session into its constituent parts and redeploying them as the elements of a wholly original, mutant creation. The project will be released on June 5, 2026 via Royal Potato Family as a double vinyl or CD package containing both albums, and separately on digital streaming platforms. 
 
With ResoNation Trio Bernstein remains committed to finding fresh territory to explore in his own singular fashion. The sparse instrumentation of trumpet, bass and drums yields a journey just as fascinating and unique as any he’s crafted in the past. With the inspiration of that trio format came the insistence on calling Colley and Waits, who Bernstein first heard playing with the legendary pianist Andrew Hill. The project also reignited his long-nurtured desire to explore a remix or dub-style retranslation of abstract improvisational music - a treatment typically accorded to more familiar pop music, making the prospect thrillingly unpredictable. 
 
Both halves of the project seem utterly new and forward-looking, but at the same time both also harken back to some of Bernstein’s earliest experiences as a musician and a listener. Especially in light of the celebration of bold compositions - both his own and those of masters like Nino Rota and John Barry - that comprises the boisterous music of Sexmob, and his taut, intricate arrangements for the Millennial Territory Orchestra, the spacious, skeletal pieces that Bernstein penned for ResoNation Trio open new and expansive pathways for the veteran trumpeter. But they also carry him full circle, back to some of his formative influences and his early experiences with the wide-open experimentation on the 1980s Downtown scene.
 
The compositional techniques that Bernstein utilized for the album called upon memories of even earlier influences. He grew up listening to the pioneering likes of Don Cherry, Lester Bowie, Baikida Carroll, Wadada Leo Smith and Butch Morris, the latter of whom hired him for some of his earliest gigs in New York. The innovative trumpet and compositional voices of these distinctly individualistic artists helped pave the way for his own, and planted the seed for an ebullient and daring musical direction that has finally found a forum for expression. 
 
Ultra Resonance is an album that Bernstein has wanted to make for more than 30 years, though even he could never have foreseen the shape that it ultimately assumed. The spark for the project was lit when he heard Garvey’s Ghost, the dub version of reggae band Burning Spear’s 1975 album Marcus Garvey. He didn’t share that initial inspiration with Scotty Hard, however, until several months into his nearly year-long process, so Ultra Resonance bears little resemblance to Garvey’s Ghost - or to anything else, for that matter. Bernstein simply handed over the trio recordings, leaving Hard a dauntingly wide-open palette to work from. 
 
In the end Hard tackled the project as a composer more than a producer, conjuring new improvised performances utilizing the trio’s music as his instruments - alongside a few additional contributions from Bernstein, who recorded long tones on an arsenal of trumpets that emerge as drones, and made his recorded debut on Electronic Valve Instrument (EVI) for the album’s final piece. Almost nothing is presented on the record as it was originally played; every single sound has been altered, reconfigured, chopped up, played backwards, played in a different key, transformed via any number of inventive methods.
 
For Hard, too, the project loops back to foundational experiences - particularly his work with legendary producer Teo Macero, who brought a similarly innovative approach to his groundbreaking work with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew. It also culminates a three-decade collaboration between Bernstein and Hard, spanning much of the revered Sexmob catalog, most notably 2023’s The Hard Way, on which they worked closely together as co-creators.
 
Sexmob has spent the last several years touring with the iconic avant-gardist Laurie Anderson, who Bernstein cites as an inspiration for undertaking this singular endeavor, calling her “unabashedly experimental.”
 
Bernstein delights in the ways that the two albums so diametrically opposed spring from the same well. He likens the all-acoustic ResoNation Trio to folk music, albeit with Harmolodic abstraction, and Ultra Resonance to a science fiction vision of a far-future musical genre. The companion albums equate to two distinct environments. One – a trumpet, acoustic bass and drum set in a room – is as traditional as humans sitting on the back porch telling stories. The second places that traditional format into a completely unfamiliar, invented environment. The results are drastically different yet equally compelling and celebratory. 
 
Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein is a trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader whose career bridges jazz, experimental music, film, and dance with a voice that is unmistakably his own. A master of the rare slide trumpet and a veteran of the New York City music scene, Bernstein has spent decades reshaping what contemporary creative music can be — equal parts deep tradition, risk-taking, and joy. His work as an arranger and collaborator spans an extraordinary range: music for films by directors Woody Allen and Robert Altman; compositions choreographed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Twyla Tharp; visionary projects with legendary producer Hal Willner; and long-standing collaborations with artists such as Lou Reed, Levon Helm, Roswell Rudd, Henry Butler, Bernie Worrell, and Sam Rivers. Bernstein’s role in Levon Helm’s late- career renaissance contributed to three GRAMMY Awards. Bernstein is best known as the founder and guiding force behind two of the most enduring and imaginative ensembles of the past quarter-century: Sexmob and Millennial Territory Orchestra (MTO). 
 
Now celebrating 30 years together, Sexmob is a quartet that consistently pushes the boundaries of the live music experience. Formed in 1996 out of a weekly residency at New York’s Knitting Factory, the band — Bernstein with Briggan Krauss, Tony Scherr, and Kenny Wollesen — performs without setlists, allowing compositions to evolve organically through improvisation and spontaneous transitions. Rooted in jazz tradition yet irreverent toward genre boundaries, Sexmob has toured extensively for three decades, playing everywhere from opera houses and rock clubs to house concerts and major international festivals. The band earned a DownBeat Critics Poll Award (Beyond Group of the Year, 2002), appears on Bill Frisell’s GRAMMY-winning Unspeakable (produced by Hal Willner), and is currently touring and collaborating with Laurie Anderson, with a forthcoming album from Laurie Anderson and Sexmob — x=x — on Nonesuch.

Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, now marking 25 years, is a nine-piece “little big band” celebrated for its witty, groove-driven reimaginings of music spanning a century — from early jazz and Ellington to Sly Stone, Prince, and beyond. The ensemble’s ambitious four-volume Community Music series (2021-2022) established a bold creative statement for the band, culminating in a major Carnegie Hall program in 2025 celebrating MTO’s 25th anniversary.
                                                
Scotty Hard
After a 10-year engagement with the punk and alternative scene in his native Vancouver, BC, Canada, Scotty Hard moved to New York City determined to participate in its hip hop revolution. His initiation began at the legendary Chung King House of Metal and famed Calliope Studios, two of Manhattan's premier hip-hop sound factories. He worked with such artists as Prince Paul, De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, Ultramagnetic MC's, Jazzy Jay, DJ Mark the 45 King, Stetsasonic, Brand Nubian, Black Sheep, Louie Vega, Fat Joe, Stereo MC's, PM Dawn, Major Force Posse and The Lifer's Group. Alongside his immersion in hip hop, Hard has also crafted music that spanned genres, particularly downtown experimental jazz with such artists as Sexmob, MMW, Vijay Iyer, DJ Logic, Harriet Tubman and many others. Hard has also produced a string of recordings with the vital music community in Brazil and released his own genre-blurring solo albums, including Radical Reconstructive Surgery (Thirsty Ear) with John Medeski, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Nasheet Waits, DJ Olive and Mauricio Takara; and The Science of Sesh - from Iceland to Africa with his two closest Brazilian friends and musical collaborators, Rodrigo Brandão and Daniel “Bozzi”  Toledo. Never one to rest on his laurels, or invest his energies in the latest musical trend or orthodoxy, Scotty has continued to mutate as a musician, producer, and collaborator extraordinaire.
 

Steven Bernstein – ResoNation Trio
Steven Bernstein and Scotty Hard - Ultra Resonance
Royal Potato Family – RPF 2608 – Recorded Dec. 20-21, 2023
Release date June 5, 2026

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