Rainey's saxophone playing eschews standard techniques; in fact, it rarely involves what have become common extended techniques. Yet, his sounds have a peculiar directness, integrated into a music that is at once meditative and disquieting. The saxophone is forgotten as one becomes immersed in pure tones, metallic chords, palpable breath, and always that primal silence, both mesmerizing and volatile. Rainey's music, although entirely acoustic, is in close kinship with electronic music, as evidenced in his collaborations with Gunter Mueller, Lionel Marchetti, Kevin Drumm, Ralf Wehowsky, Jerome Noetinger, and Jason Lescalleet, to name a few. With trumpeter Greg Kelley, he is the cofounder of the unlikely improv supergroup, nmperign, and is also the founder and director of the premier electroacoustic ensemble, the BSC. He has performed all over the world, in festivals such as Musique Action (France), Densites (France), Fruits d'Mhere (France), High Zero (Baltimore), Amplify (New York), Improvised and Otherwise (New York), the Big Sur New Music Festival (Big Sur), and most recently as one of the first improvisers to be invited to Argentina through the U.S. Embassy.
"The sax blows, stutters; it does not produce notes but, rather, sounds; indeed, better, words. Rainey pours forth authentic passion and self control that stands alone in contemporary music." Stephano I. Bianchi, _Blow Up_
"Rainey is a player of exceptional control and thoughtful expression." Michael Rosenstein, _Cadence_
"Rainey (has an) utterly distinct approach to playing the soprano saxophone, an intensely physical determination to take the instrument beyond all obvious limits. He works outside of idiom, pummeling a column of breath, eliciting refracted tones, overblowing ferociously. Closer to Antonin Artaud than Sidney Bechet." Julian Cowley, _The Wire_