Jazz Articles about Ben Goldberg

About Ben Goldberg

Album Review

Ben Goldberg: Everything Happens To Be.

Read "Everything Happens To Be." reviewed by John Chacona

by John Chacona
June 18, 2021

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 ...

Album Review

Vijay Anderson Trio: Studio Sessions Vol. 10

Read "Studio Sessions Vol. 10" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
March 2, 2021

Brooklyn-based Californian drummer Vijay Anderson leads an impressively cohesive trio on Studio Sessions Vol .10. In this case cohesion is a product of shared experience. Anderson's career has been intertwined with bassist Adam Lane's since 2003, and can be heard on Zero Degree Music (CIMP, 2005), New Magical Kingdom (Clean Feed, 2006),and Absolute Horizon (NoBusiness, 2013). Likewise, clarinetist Ben Goldberg has been a long-time colleague of the drummer, as evidenced by his appearances on Hard-Boiled Wonderland (Not Two, 2010) and ...

Album Review

Geof Bradfield, Ben Goldberg, Dana Hall Trio: General Semantics

Read "General Semantics" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
December 16, 2020

A fortuitous meeting between veteran clarinetist Ben Goldberg and two up-and-coming stalwarts of the Chicago creative jazz scene, saxophonist Geof Bradfield and drummer Dana Hall, General Semantics is a tribute to the power of spontaneous interaction among like-minded musicians. Although Bradfield and Hall have worked together extensively since Bradfield's quintet album Our Roots (Origin Records, 2015), neither had performed with Goldberg. But when the three met at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival in 2017 and discovered their sympathetic, wide-ranging musical ...

Radio & Podcasts

Ben Goldberg, Jason Robinson, Orchestre National De Jazz and More

by Maurice Hogue
October 28, 2020

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 ...

Radio & Podcasts

Tower Jazz Composers Orch. & Daniel Bernardes

by Maurice Hogue
January 8, 2020

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 ...

Album Review

Ben Goldberg: Good Day For Cloud Fishing

Read "Good Day For Cloud Fishing" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 13, 2019

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 ...

Live Review

Edgefest 2017: Give the Drummers Some, Part 2-2

by Troy Dostert
October 30, 2017

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 ...