Jason Berry credits Marlon Brando with introducing him to Julius Caesar.
The San Francisco composer, multi-instrumentalist, and sequential artist saw Brando as Mark Antony in the 1953 film based on William Shakespeare’s tragedy and became intrigued.
“I said, ‘This is just amazing,’ especially with all of those fantastic actors in it,” said Berry, who also fronts Nubdug Ensemble, an experimental music collective.
“At one point, I was thinking about adapting Julius Caesar as a comic strip and thought, ‘I can do a little bit each day.’ Once I started plotting it out, I had to draw so many panels a day and realized there was no way I could do that. I kind of abandoned it, but it was always in my head.”
While the comic strip didn’t work out, Berry eventually landed on doing a musical adaptation of Julius Caesar instead.
“I said, ‘Well, I know that because I’ve done all that research already on the comic strip, so why don’t I do that?’” Berry said. “I just started fiddling around with it, seeing how the words would work over the top of it.”
Berry spent the next two years composing, arranging, and recording Third with Nubdug Ensemble. He assembled 17 notable musicians to help him record 11 tracks for the ambitious album, which includes elements of jazz, funk, and prog rock.
“Once I had a structure and the pre-existing characters of Julius Caesar, I said, ‘I can write a song from this person’s perspective and from this person’s perspective,’” Berry said. “They can be different, but they’ll be unified because it’ll be under the overarching themes of the play.”
On Third, Berry explores themes of ambition, power, corruption, and political violence. The album includes compelling instrumentals and vocal tracks to reimagine Julius Caesar as a musical adaptation for the 21st century.
“It’s talking about the end of the republic, and the story is timeless and timely,” Berry said. “It seemed like this would be the time to do it, if ever there were.”
What resulted is an innovative, genre-bending album filled with poetic lyrics and cerebral instrumentation. Third refreshingly chronicles the political assassination of Roman dictator Julius Caesar and his murder by a group of senators led by Cassius and Brutus.
“These are all archetypes, and these are things that keep coming up again and again through history,” Berry said. “Leading up to the [2024] election, I had that sinking feeling and thought, ‘I think I see how it’s gonna go, but I hope it’s not.’ I personally wanted to be able to work through those feelings in a way that could somehow be positive and not just worry myself to death.”
To learn more, I spoke with Berry about writing and recording Third.
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