By Jan Engoren

Peter Betan and Mark Berner

Lerner and Loewe. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Simon and Garfunkel. To paraphrase Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, musical duos go together like a horse and carriage—you can’t have one without the other.

South Florida has its own long-running musical duo. Peter Betan and Marc Berner, both transplanted New Yorkers, have been making music and entertaining crowds in Miami for almost 20 years. A local fixture, they perform at festivals and events, including the Hollywood Music and Art Festival, where they’ve played for the fast six years. They were the Featured Original Artists in Fort Lauderdale’s Sunday Jazz Series and Miami’s Art Deco and International Film Festivals. They’ve opened for Richie Havens and Chicago, among others.

They play at museums, art openings and in opera houses in France. Most recently they’ve headlined at the Books & Books café in Coral Gables and the jazz club, Upstairs at the Van Dyke Café, on Lincoln Road in South Beach.

Betan, 54, who comes from a musical family—his uncle is 91 years old and still plays his trumpet—is a singer/songwriter and acoustic and classical guitar player, while Berner, 51, who takes inspiration from Herbie Mann and Hubert Laws, a jazz flutist, plays various woodwind instruments, including the flute, and sings harmony.

It was kismet when Betan and Berner met in the late 1980s at the old, defunct Miami hangout, Shagnasty’s, next to the legendary blues bar, former speakeasy and gambling hall, Tobacco Road. They hit it off immediately. Besides being musical partners, they are best friends and each other’s inspirations. They have been performing and singing together as a musical duo ever since, creating a chemistry that goes beyond music.

Betan and Berner at work during a recent performance

Their partnership remains dynamic and fresh thanks to their verbal and non-verbal communication skills.

“We are spontaneous and innovative with our musical styles; we improvise and break new creative boundaries,” says Betan. “We challenge ourselves and always strive for the next level musically and artistically.”

One of Betan’s favorite improvisations and gigs is a regular Saturday night gig at the Morada Bay Beach Café in Islamorada where he plays and improvises an “ode to the sunset” each Saturday night as the sun sets and inspires him.

Together, Betan and Berner have created an exceptional, distinctive sound—a highly stylized blend of pop, jazz, world, “new acoustic,” Latin and rock. Their music is in the same vein as that of Sting, Sade, Peter Gabriel and husband and wife jazz team Tuck & Patti.

Betan terms their musical style a “musical stew.”

“We are purists,” he says. “We don’t use any digital sequences or background rhythms. We like to create our own inimitable flavor of sounds. We borrow liberally from pop music, mix in a little bit of jazz, blend smoothly with some R&B and sift gently with some new-age transcendence. We shake it up, heat it up and voilà, a Betan and Berner original creation.”

As the woodwind player of the duo, Berner plays clarinet, piccolo, flute and saxophone.. Part of what makes their one-of-a-kind sound is Berner’s mastery of the shakulute, a Japanese hybrid flute he began playing in 2005.

“One of my favorite instruments to play with Peter is the bass flute, which adds a distinctive color to our sound,” says Berner. “Sometimes it isn’t what you play, but what you don’t play—the silence between the notes says a lot.”

“When I first heard it played, I fell in love with the sound of the shakulute,” says Berner. “I was inspired to ask my friend, Monty Levenson, president of the International Shakuhachi Society, to make me a shakulute for my alto flute, which he did, giving me the distinction and honor of being the world's first alto shakulutist.”

Levenson, author of the book, Stalking the Wild Bore: A Trek Into Shakuhachi Darkness, has been making shakuhachi flutes since 1970 and has crafted more than 6,000 flutes.

The shakulute combines the western silver flute with a shakuhachi (a traditional Japanese bamboo end-blown five-holed flute) mouthpiece. The instrument is held vertically like a clarinet, not horizontally like a traditional western flute, blending east and west.

“The sound of the shakulute is mesmerizing and audiences are enraptured and fascinated by the ethereal, breathy sound of the bamboo combined with the metal,” says Berner. “It is not an easy instrument to master. It makes its own demands and requires practice in order to produce a strong resonant sound.”

The musical duo entertained guests at Miami Stories, New Theatre’s fundraiser at the Miami Science Museum, last April Photo: Henry Perez

Berner’s signature sound can be heard on many of their songs, including, a new piece, “Whirlwind”, in which he plays the shakulute while at the same time switching back and forth between the saxophone and alto flute and then back again.

Cristina Nosti, director of events and marketing and Books & Books Bookstore in Coral Gables, is in charge of the live music series the bookstore hosts every Friday night. She books Grammy award-winners and high-caliber, musical acts to perform in their small, intimate courtyard.

“We book top international performers and have had musicians from the University of Miami, from South America, as well as opera singers, says Nosti. “Our performers and ambiance appeal to devotees of good music and the people who come here really listen and appreciate the music.

“I booked Betan and Berner here for the first time last May,” Nosti continues. “People came to tell me in person how much they enjoyed the concert. Because of this positive reception to them and their music, I booked an encore performance with Betan and Berner in our outdoor café in July.”

Music, books, and a free Betan and Berner performance at an outdoor café on a balmy Miami summer night—as Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen wrote, “it’s an institute you can’t disparage.”

Betan and Berner will perform July 18, 7-11 p.m., at Books & Books Café, 265 Aragon Ave. Coral Gables. For more information, call 305-442-4408 or visit www.booksandbooks.com.

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