Readin’ N Rhythm’s house band the Brooklyn Players Reading Society features Ben Jaffe on tenor saxophone with Becky Fine-Firesheets on vocals and keys and David Fine-Firesheets on drum kit. The trio often describes their performances as “this weird spoken word thing we do,” but it goes much deeper than that.
Ben has been playing saxophone for so long that the instrument just seems like a normal, extra limb he happened to be born with. Having toured and performed for decades, Ben draws from a rich personal history of musical styles and experiences then adds his own tricks and quirks to create a completely one-of-a-kind sound. Think yelping melodies that leap and twist, shrieks and squeals that feel more like animals in the wild than a woodwind, and self-induced feedback that somehow simultaneously harmonizes with all of this.
Becky and Ben play off of one another throughout a BPRS piece, she singing, screaming, grumbling or soliloquizing from various texts and songs selected to fit the overall theme of the night, or just because she likes them. Becky knew as a six-year-old when she wrote her first story about a Liquid Prince who brings dead girls back to life that she wanted to 
be a writer. Having already started piano lessons, she continued on both routes and now finds great pleasure in this bizarre combination of music and words.
David is the dreadlocked master swimmer who keeps this weirdness all together in time, but don’t be fooled into thinking anything he plays for BPRS is “straight.” His 20+ years as a drummer taught him how to rage the punk, chill out with the funk then break all the rules while still keeping everything rooted. His detailed style explores the same themes Ben and Becky bat back and forth but takes them in entirely new directions without dominating the stage. He only misses a beat when he means to (at least he makes it seem this way).
Experimental? Spoken word? Avant-garde? Whatever you want to call it, it’s their truest expression of Readin’ N Rhythm.
