Smalltalk Code Yannick Peeters, Tim Berne, Frans van Isacker, Tom Rainey, Frederik Leroux

• 1 Lucid 04:56
• 2 Walden 04:00
• 3 Neh 07:24
• 4 Smalltalk Intro 01:25
• 5 Smalltalk Code 06:49
• 6 Fa Non May Locke 04:27
• 7 Distant Fires 06:14
• 8 Birch 04:20
• 9 Mothers of the Veil 02:57
• Total Runtime 42:32

Info for Smalltalk Code

GingerBlackGinger, the daring and authentic project centered around Belgian double bass player Yannick Peeters, has entered a new chapter. They are now joined by American avant-garde alto saxophonist Tim Berne. Their new album, titled 'Smalltalk Code' will be released in February 2026.

“Tim is a hero of mine, a great example when it comes to music composition. I didn’t even dare ask him to join at first. This project is going to be unique; I don’t know of many bands with two alto saxophones. I’m excited to see the dynamic form between Tim and Frans Van Isacker. Tim has such a strong personality, he has a great impact on our sound. The fact that Tim and Tom Rainey have played together before, means there was an element of trust there from the beginning.” – Yannick Peeters

GingerBlackGinger is made up of Yannick Peeters (BE) on double bass (Jakob Bro, Frank Vaganée, Chris Joris, Mark Feldman, Jim Black, Joshua Redman, Hank Roberts), Frederik Leroux (BE) on guitar (Flat Earth Society, Ruben Machtelinckx, Joachim Badenhorst, Lander Gyselinck, Steven Delannoye), Frans Van Isacker (BE) on saxophone and clarinet (Tom Malmendier, Quentin Stokart, Ottla, Chantal Acda & The Atlantic Drifters), Tom Rainey (US) on drums (Fred Hersch, Ingrid Laubrock, Mary Halvorson, Mark Helias, Joey Baron, Jim Black) and now Tim Berne (US) on saxophone (Paul Motian, Bill Frisell, Hank Roberts, John Zorn, Marc Ducret, Michael Formanek, Craig Taborn). These are personalities with a vision: creative stubborn people who won’t settle for mediocrity; restless spirits who keep looking for new sounds, contexts and like-minded people, and are therefore the ideal partners in crime for Peeters.

In January 2024, the band released their debut album ‘GingerBlackGinger’ This album combines elaborate soundscapes, brief bursts of energy, and mesmerizing grooves. In May of 2025, Yannick Peeters was given carte blanche by Bozar. She took the opportunity to invite her personal musical hero Tim Berne to join the band for the recording of a new album and a live show. The result of this journey into new musical adventures is the album 'Smalltalk Code', to be released in February of 2026.

Yannick Peeters, double bass
Tim Berne, alto saxophone
Tom Rainey, drums
Frans van Isacker, alto saxophone, clarinet
Frederik Leroux, guitar

Recorded by Cyrille Obermüller at Rockstar Recording Studio
Mixed & Mastered by Oz Fritz

Yannick Peeters
Rooted in a solid foundation, Yannick Peeters navigates the tensions between contrast, intensity, and collective imagination. She began playing double bass as a teenager and studied at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp under Piet Verbist and Gulli Gudmundsson. Her development continued through workshops in Dworp (Belgium), Salzburg (Austria), and Banff (Canada), where she studied with Nic Thys, Mark Dresser, Matt Penman, and Ben Street. Through the Erasmus exchange program, she studied with Anders Jormin in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Yannick has participated in numerous boundary-pushing ensembles and projects. In 2014, she toured with 22 Strings and a Piece Of Wood alongside Jakob Bro, Frantz Loriot, Steven Delannoye, Serafine Stragier, and Kristof Roseeuw. She performed and recorded with Guillaume Vierset’s Harvest, Claron McFadden’s music theatre production Aubergine, and Natashia Kelly’s Dear Darkening Ground, with Dré Pallemaerts, Nicola Andrioli, and Ruben Machtelinckx.

She was part of and recorded with Peter Jacquemyn’s Fundament, a twelve-piece ensemble focused on low-register instruments, and joined drummer Jelle Van Giel’s band Close Distance. She also contributed to Games & Motives, a project by Anke Verslype and Willem Heylen featuring Jozef Dumoulin, Lynn Cassiers, and Frans Van Isacker.

Yannick is also part of Drawing Basses, an interactive performance concept led by Kristof Roseeuw with Joachim Badenhorst, where the audience draws graphic scores that are interpreted live by the musicians.

She leads her own band GingerBlackGinger, with Frederik Leroux, Frans Van Isacker, and Tom Rainey. Their debut album was released on the W.E.R.F. label in January 2024. In 2025, she toured with the Jakob Bro Large Ensemble in Denmark and Norway, performing with Jorge Rossy, Jakob Høyer, Anders Christensen, Kresten Osgood, Melissa Aldana, Hanne De Backer, Jesper Zeuthen, and writer Peter Laugesen.

In May 2025, she was granted a carte blanche at Bozar (Brussels), where she performed with GingerBlackGinger and special guest Tim Berne. A new album from this collaboration is set for release on Challenge Records at the end of 2025.

She has toured extensively across Europe, and also performed in Australia, the United States, and Mexico.

Tim Berne
Though Berne was a music fan, he had no interest in playing a musical instrument until he was in college, when he purchased an alto saxophone. He was more interested in rhythm and blues music – Stax records releases and Aretha Franklin, especially – until he heard Julius Hemphill’s 1972 recording Dogon A.D.

Hemphill was known for his integration of soul music and funk with free jazz. Berne moved to New York City in 1974. There Berne took lessons from Hemphill, and later recorded with him.

In 1979, Berne founded Empire Records to release his own recordings. He recorded Fulton Street Maul and Sanctified Dreams for Columbia Records, which generated some discussion and controversy, due in part to the fact that Berne’s music had little in common with the neo-traditionalist hard bop performers prominent in the mid-1980s. Some regarded Berne’s music as uncommercial. In the late 1990s Berne founded Screwgun Records, which has released his own recordings, as well as others’ music.

Beyond his recordings as a bandleader, Berne has recorded and/or performed with guitarist Bill Frisell, avant-garde composer/sax player John Zorn, violinist Mat Maneri, guitarist David Torn, cellist Hank Roberts, trumpet player Herb Robertson, the ARTE Quartett and as a member of the cooperative trio Miniature.

Recent years have found Berne performing in several different groups with drummers Tom Rainey and Gerald Cleaver, keyboardist Craig Taborn, bassists Michael Formanek and Drew Gress, guitarists Marc Ducret and David Torn, and reeds player Chris Speed.

He is one-third of the group BBC (Berne/Black/Cline) along with drummer Jim Black and Nels Cline of Wilco. The group released a critically acclaimed album called The Veil in 2011.

Berne’s complex, multi-section compositions are often quite lengthy; twenty- to thirty-minute pieces are not unusual. One critic wrote that Berne’s long songs “don’t grow tiresome. The musicians are brilliantly creative and experienced enough not to get lost in all the room provided by these large time frames.”

Tom Rainey
was born in Los Angeles, California in 1957. Since moving to New York City in 1979 he has performed at festivals and clubs throughout North America and Europe with a wide range of artists, including John Abercrombie, Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom, Ted Curson, Marc Ducret, George Gruntz, David Torn, Mark Helias, Fred Hersch, Andy Laster, Joe Lovano, Carmen McRae, Mike Nock, Simon Nabatov, New and Used, Matthias Schubert, Tom Varner, WDR Big Band, Ken Werner and Denny Zeitlin. Tom Rainey received an National Endowment for the Arts grant to compose and perform a concert of music for percussion and drums featuring Dave Samuels and Arto Tuncboyaci. Rainey’s voluminous recording credits and the artistic caliber of the musicians he’s supported would easily place him on the A-list of drummers closely identified with the New York City modern creative jazz scene roughly from the late ’80s onward.

This album contains no booklet.