Ben Goldberg: Clarinet Communion

Warren Allen

CD/DVD Reviewer since 2008

Warren is a freelance writer working in New York and Boston.

Recent articles (53 total)

Published: March 30, 2010

The diversity of clarinetist Ben Goldberg's musical interests may only be matched by the intensity of his study. He grew up on The Beatles and classic jazz, started playing Klezmer music at the University of California, Berkeley in the early '80s, and studied with renowned classical clarinet teacher Rosario Mazzeo. In 1984, he became the clarinetist for The Klezmorim, touring throughout the U.S. and Europe, where he also met and learned from the legendary soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. In 1987, he started the New Klezmer Trio with drummer Kenny Wollesen and bassist Dan Seamans, a band that led the way in injecting elements of jazz and the avant-garde to the previously insulated world of Jewish traditional music.

Since then, he has worked with musicians as influential and eclectic as Andrew Hill, Bobby Bradford, Bill Frissell, Vijay Iyer, Myra Melford, Nels Cline, John Zorn, and the genre-mashing Tin Hat outfit. Today, he is an integral part of the West Coast scene, and leads groups including the Ben Goldberg quintet, which crafted a deeply personal dedication to Steve Lacy with The Door, The Hat, The Chair, The Fact (Cryptogramophone, 2006). 2009 saw the release of Speech Communication (Tzadik, 2009), the first release from a version of the New Klezmer Trio in nine years. Goldberg also started his own record label to put out Go Home (BAG Production Records, 2009), an album of his heavily grooving compositions played by a quartet with Charlie Hunter on guitar, Ron Miles on trumpet, and Scott Amendola on drums.

All About Jazz: Did you grow up in a musical household?

Ben Goldberg: Well, my mother actually played the clarinet in high school and college. When I was little, she had pretty much stopped playing, but once in a while, she would take the clarinet out and play for us. I used to beg her to do that. I remember telling her, "Get that black thing out of the box!" I loved the smell of it, the sound. So, from a very early age I was focused on the clarinet.

AAJ: And your father worked in linguistics?

BG: He was in the area of what they call speech communication, or human communication studies.

AAJ: So that must have informed your development, too.

BG: Definitely, and one thing I remember my father doing when I was little: When he would prepare his lectures at home, he'd be sitting in a chair in the study or on the couch, and as he wrote down notes for his lecture, he'd kind of mumble the words to himself, like, "Meh- meh-meh. Meh- meh-mah." And then, later on, I noticed that that's a big part of my style, my way of playing music— that kind of rhythm, that speech-like something.

AAJ: What were the first records that got you interested in music?

BG: When I was really little, we listened to a lot of Pete Seeger in my house. The next thing I remember was the Beatles. The White Album (EMI, 1968) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Capitol, 1967) had a huge influence on me when I was young, about nine or whatever. After that, I got interested in jazz. I still remember, and I still have, the first jazz records I ever bought, and I was kinda lucky. I think the first jazz record I ever bought was Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (OJC, 1957). I didn't know anything about anything, so to me, that's what jazz sounded like. And that's a great record, a really great record, and I really studied it.

Then I picked up two other jazz records that had a really good impact on me. One was by Cannonball Adderley, a record called Inside Straight (OJC, 1973) with Hal Galper and Roy McCurdy, and Nat Adderley of course, so it's a really beautiful, really funky album from the early '70s.

Then another one that I got ahold of by chance—well, two others I have to mention. One is a Sonny Stitt record that I just happened to buy because who knows why; I didn't know who Sonny Stitt was. And it still kills me. It's this one called So Doggone Good (Prestige, 1972), and it has Hampton Hawes playing the piano. So sweet. It's unbelievable. And the other one—this is kind of weird, but I walked into the record store and I stumbled into this unbelievable solo Thelonious Monk record. I don't know why I bought it. It was on this label called GMP; it might just be called Thelonious Monk. It's solo piano, and it's just so pure—even for Monk it's so pure. With songs like "Eronel" and "Evidence." It's so cool.

AAJ: It's interesting that the first three albums you mentioned are anchored by major alto sax players. Were you playing alto at the time?

BG: I was already playing clarinet in the concert band, but in those days if you wanted to be in the jazz band, you had to play the saxophone, so they put me on alto. That was probably part of it—I wanted to learn the alto.

AAJ: Was there one that you wanted to play more at the end of the day?

BG: Well, I wanted to play jazz, but it took me quite a while to figure out that I wanted to play jazz on the clarinet. Clarinet wasn't really thought of at that point as a jazz instrument. It was the past.

View All 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next »