Be Bread

Formed in 2002, Be Bread is an electro-acoustic band that functions as a variable-sized ensemble: featuring a core unit of trumpeter Cuong Vu or guitarist Brandon Ross and bassist Stomu Takeishi, and — in the larger versions — clarinetist Ben Goldberg and drummer Matt Wilson. Myra Melford created the group to play music based on her harmonium studies in India, and the band's book includes both pieces composed on the melodica — that use a wide range of timbres available through acoustic instruments like banjo and harmonium as well as electronically manipulated sound — and the more recent compositions that form the acoustic suite for sextet, The Whole Tree Gone, a work commissioned by Chamber Music America's New Works Presentation.

Be Bread released The Image of Your Body on Cryptogrammophone in 2006, and The Whole Tree Gone on Firehouse 12 Records in 2010.


Cuong Vu — trumpet

Ben Goldberg — clarinet

Brandon Ross — guitar

Stomu Takeishi — electric bass

Matt Wilson — drums

Myra Melford — piano, harmonium

Melford can be rhythmic, romantic, stoic, wry, and lusty but most of all daring — all in one tune. More importantly she‘s reconnected music to motion, leaving today‘s straightlaced young men in suits, who have dominated recent jazz, in her wake.

Stuart Nicholson,
The London Observer