Ben Goldberg

Ben Goldberg is an American clarinet player and composer.

Early life and education

He grew up in Denver, Colorado. Goldberg grew up playing clarinet, playing in school bands, and has an undergraduate music degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master of Arts in composition from Mills College. He was a pupil of clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo, and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano. Interested in the intersection between jazz (the music) and clarinet (the instrument), Goldberg started exploring the rich clarinet traditions found in klezmer music.

Career

After a stint with the Bay Area band The Klezmorim, he branched out and created his own band, the New Klezmer Trio, named after the New Tango Quintet, with Dan Seamans and Kenny Wollesen. This was the first of many ensembles that Goldberg would lead and/or participate in, primarily in and around the Bay Area. The New Klezmer Trio has produced three albums and the free improvisation on "Masks and Faces" was described as having "kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music."^[1] Goldberg's musicality is inspiring, to audiences and to his fellow musicians; "Sometimes the most influential musicians are the ones who don't call much attention to themselves. Take Berkeley clarinetist Ben Goldberg, who for the past two decades has quietly inspired some of the Bay Area's most creative musicians."^[1]

In addition to composing for and playing in the Ben Goldberg Quintet, he has performed in the groups Tin Hat, Plays Monk, Myra Melford's Be Bread, Nels Cline's New Monastery, Afterlife Music Radio, and Go Home. The eleven-piece Ben Goldberg's Brainchild performs his on-the-spot compositions.

Goldberg has played with Bill Frisell, Don Byron, Ellery Eskelin, Jenny Scheinman, John Zorn, Mark Dresser, Mark Feldman, Miya Masaoka, Roswell Rudd, Steven Bernstein, Vijay Iyer, Wayne Horvitz, and Zeena Parkins.

Goldberg is also the founder of the music label BAG Production.^[2]

Recently Goldberg has branched out into songwriting.^[3] His "Orphic Machine" project, largely commissioned by Chamber Music America, premiered at the Jewish Music Festival in March 2012 and was also performed in Los Angeles, California. The song-cycle is based on the writings of Allen Grossman and, for one critic, "the piece's thoughtful, sprawling compositions course through such a variety of styles and open-ended impulses that it would be tempting to dub this a new kind of world music."^[4] Regarding songwriting and composing, in a 2010 profile piece in All About Jazz, Goldberg said, "I don't just want to give people something that they can appreciate or understand, or that makes them think, or something like that. I used to kind of feel that that's what I wanted to do, but that's not what I want anymore. I want to give people something that they can love."^[5]

Awards and honors

In 2011, Goldberg was named the No. 1 Rising Star Clarinetist by the Down Beat Critic's Poll.^[6]

• 1992 – Jazz Study Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; studied with Joe Lovano
• 1994 – Jazz Performance Grant from National Endowment for the Arts; concerts focused on Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Steve Lacy, Bobby Bradford/John Carter and Andrew Hill
• 1996 – Jazz Performance Grant from National Endowment for the Arts; new works
• 2007 – Aaron Copland Fund for Music, new works for the Ben Goldberg Quintet
• 2007 – M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, a response to a painting by Marsden Hartley
• 2007 – Chamber Music America / French American Cultural Exchange
• 2007 – American Composers Forum
• 2009 – San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music; new works for the Ben Goldberg Quintet
• 2010 – Chamber Music America / New Jazz Works; large ensemble composition based on the writings of Allen Grossman
• 2010 – Alpert Awards in the Arts
• 2011 – Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Composers Lab

Discography

• New Klezmer Trio – Masks and Faces (Tzadik, 1991)
• The Relative Value of Things (33 1/4), with Kenny Wollesen (1993)
• Junk Genius – Junk Genius (Knitting Factory Works) with John Schott, Trevor Dunn, and Kenny Wollesen (1995)
• New Klezmer Trio – Melt Zonk Rewire (Tzadik, 1995)
• Light at the Crossroads (Songlines) with Marty Ehrlich (1997)
• What Comes Before (Tzadik), reflections on post-tonal harmonic structures with John Schott and Michael Sarin (1998)
• Twelve Minor (Avant) (1998)
• Ben Goldberg Trio – Here By Now (Music and Arts) with Trevor Dunn and Elliot Humberto Kavee (1998)
• Junk Genius – Ghost of Electricity (Songlines) (1999)
• New Klezmer Trio – Short for Something (Tzadik, 2000)
• Almost Never (nuscope) with John Schott and Trevor Dunn (2000)
• Ben Goldberg – Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin (Victo) (2004)
• Ben Goldberg Quintet – The Door, the Hat, the Chair, the Fact (Cryptogramophone), a record of compositions dedicated to Steve Lacy (2006)
• Nels Cline – New Monastery (Cryptogramophone) (2006)
• Plays Monk (Long Song Records) with Scott Amendola and Devin Hoff (2007)
• Tin Hat – The Sad Machinery of Spring (Rykodisc) (2007)
• Ben Goldberg – Go Home (BAG Production) 2009
• Ben Goldberg Trio – Speech Communication (Tzadik) with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen (2009)
• Clarinet Thing – Cry, Want (BC Records) (2009)
• Tin Hat – Foreign Legion (BAG Production) 2010
• Ben Goldberg Quartet – Baal: Book of Angels Volume 15 (Tzadik, 2010) – John Zorn's Masada Book 2
• Myra Melford's Be Bread – The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12) (2010)

As sideman

With Nels Cline

• Lovers (Blue Note, 2016)

With Kris Davis

• Save Your Breath (Clean Feed, 2015)

With Jamie Saft

• Borscht Belt Studies (Tzadik, 2011)

See also

• List of clarinetists
• List of jazz musicians
• List of Mills College people
• List of people from Berkeley, California
• List of people from Denver, Colorado
• List of University of California, Santa Cruz people

References

Further reading

February 2013 New York Times review of "Unfold Ordinary Mind" and "Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues.”

External links

• bengoldberg.net, his official website
• BAG Productions BAG Production record label
• Ben Goldberg at AllMusic
• Ben Goldberg at the Internet Movie Database