Jazz Articles about Ben Goldberg
About Ben Goldberg
Instrument: Clarinet
Article Coverage | Calendar | Albums | Photos | Similar ArtistsBen Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.

by Jerome Wilson
If you do not listen too closely, there are parts of this download-only release that sound soothing and gentle. That is not really the case and that is the fun part of this music. When the reed players play a pretty or swinging melody line, there is always some irritant factor elsewhere in the band to spice things up. All of these musicians are known for their experimental tendencies and have worked together before in various combinations. The ...
read moreBen Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.

by John Chacona
The music of Ben Goldberg seems to come from a place outside of time--or maybe it comes from several times simultaneously. Maybe it's the instruments he chooses; while the clarinet family has been on the comeback trail in jazz for a quarter century, it's a sound that invariably invokes the New Orleans of a century ago. That's especially true when Goldberg picks up the mellow, woody, Albert-system E-flat instrument on Cold Weather." That tune's sweet melancholy wobbles perilously close to ...
read moreBen Goldberg, Jason Robinson, Orchestre National De Jazz and More

by Maurice Hogue
This episode is a little reed" heavy with debuts of new recordings by Jason Robinson and his quartet, Ben Goldberg and Kenny Wollesen's Music for an Avant-Garde Massage Parlor, Portugal's José Lencastre, Rachel Musson from England, and I.P.A. from Scandinavia, plus several other saxophonically inclined folks. The Orchestre National De Jazz from France tackles the music of Ornette Coleman on Dancing in Your Head(s), while the duo of Matthew Putnam and Michael Sarian take a trip into the avant-garde. Lots ...
read moreTower Jazz Composers Orch. & Daniel Bernardes

by Maurice Hogue
Improvisation is the core of clarinetist Ben Goldberg's Good Day For Cloud Fishing, and not just the music. His fascination with poet Dean Young's work led to the creation of this album where the trio of Goldberg, Nels Cline and Ron Miles improvised upon a musical sketch that Goldberg wrote based upon one of Young's poems. The poet was present in the studio with his sturdy typewriter and he then created a new poem based on the music he was ...
read moreBen Goldberg: Good Day For Cloud Fishing

by Mark Corroto
Poetry and jazz, jazz and poetry, which came first? Ben Goldberg poses that same question with Good Day For Cloud Fishing. His answer to the philosophical 'chicken or the egg' riddle is well, both. Sure, Homer wrote the Iliad centuries before King Oliver put cornet to lips, but damn if there wasn't some gutbucket rhyming to be found in Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia. Goldberg riding the wave of jazz/poetry projects beginning with Kenneth Patchen's collaboration with Charles ...
read moreEdgefest 2017: Give the Drummers Some, Part 2-2

by Troy Dostert
Part 1 | Part 2 Edgefest Ann Arbor, MI October 20-21, 2017 On the last two days of the festival, the Edgefest audience was treated to even more of the eclectic, explorative music that was present in abundance on Wednesday and Thursday. Edgefest-goers who were able to attend the early-evening performance of Ben Goldberg's Invisible Guy" trio experienced Goldberg's distinctive combination of technical brilliance and imaginative, boundary- stretching work on ...
read moreTwo Sides of Ben Goldberg

by Troy Collins
Developments in the evolving recording industry have inspired an increasing number of musicians to form their own labels. San Francisco-based clarinetist Ben Goldberg, a veteran of the 1990s Downtown New York scene, joined many of his peers in 2009 with Go Home, the inaugural release of his BAG Production Records imprint. Goldberg's prior efforts, issued by independents like Songlines and Tzadik, included an assortment of diverse projects, ranging from the Radical Jewish Culture experiments of the New Klezmer Trio to ...
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