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Ben Goldberg is an American clarinet player and composer.
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.
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." 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."
In addition to composing for and playing in the Ben Goldberg Quintet, he performs in the following groups:
Tin Hat
Plays Monk, a trio with Scott Amendola and Devin Hoff
Myra Melford's Be Bread
Nels Cline's New Monastery
Go Home with Charlie Hunter, Ron Miles and Scott Amendola – The New Yorker called Go Home "a searching ensemble that welcomes lyrical improvisation while embracing the groove"
Afterlife Music Radio, an electro-acoustic quartet
The eleven-piece Ben Goldberg's Brainchild performs Ben's on-the-spot compositions.
The network of artists with whom Goldberg performs also includes:
John Zorn
Bill Frisell
Roswell Rudd
Wayne Horvitz
Don Byron
Mark Feldman
Ellery Eskelin
Zeena Parkins
Mark Dresser
Vijay Iyer
Miya Masaoka
Jenny Scheinman
Steven Bernstein
Writing career
Recently Goldberg has branched out into songwriting. 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." 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."
Recognition
In 2011, Goldberg was named the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist by the Down Beat Critic's Poll.
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