John Berndt

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For the similarly-named author, see John Berendt.

John Berndt (b. 1967) is a musician and organizer based in Baltimore, Maryland who is best known as an extended-technique experimental saxophonist and electronic musician. As an enfant terrible, he participated in what might be called the second wave of the neoism cultural movement. The first wave having consisted of Monty Cantsin, Istvan Kantor, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, and Blaster Al Ackerman, amongst many others. Neoism is an ongoing cultural movement which aligns itself with subversion and self-reference, but also practically involves mail art, tape trading, noise music, and post-Fluxus happenings in North America and Europe. Berndt's participation in Neoism didn't begin until after the 1st eight Neoist Apartment Festivals had happened from 1980 to 1984. Berndt participated in the "64th International Neoist Apartment Festival" in 1986 in Berlin, the "One Millionth" in New York City in late 1988, and the "13th" in Paris in 1994.

Subsequently becoming a respected businessman and grafting those skills onto his avant-garde roots, Berndt focused more intensely on experimental music and philosophy. As one member of a collective of artists and improvising musicians in the spirit of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, works on the Red Room experimental performance series, which has presented weekly events since the early 1996, and the High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music, a large annual improvised music festival begun in 1999 in Baltimore where all performers play in new groups. This group became a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, High Zero Foundation, in 2001. He also runs the "Recorded" record label which has issued over twenty-three CDs of experimental music, including several discs by Berndt's collaborator Henry Flynt.