Ari Hest

Growing up in the Bronx, Ari Hest first developed a passion for music during his teenage years. Although piano lessons had occupied him earlier in childhood, he acquired guitar skills independently, drawing primarily from his parents’ record collection that featured Paul Simon alongside alternative radio staples such as Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews. While enrolled at NYU, he began playing a blend of covers and original songs across the East Coast college circuit, gradually cultivating a solid regional audience that he sustained through the self-released albums Coming Home in 2001 and Story After Story in 2002. Columbia Records offered him a contract in 2003, leading to the 2004 release of Someone to Tell. Working alongside producer David Rolfe, Hest assembled an album that combined fresh compositions with previously recorded tracks and settled into the polished adult-alternative style associated with Josh Kelley and John Mayer. In 2006 he issued the EP The Green Room Sessions, performing every instrument himself and capturing the performances with the widely available GarageBand software; Columbia followed this with the full-length The Break-In the next year. Beginning in 2008, Hest launched a subscription service that delivered a newly recorded song each Monday throughout the calendar year. Supporters selected their preferred tracks, which were compiled for the appropriately named 2009 album Twelve Mondays. His debut project for Downtown Records’ Mercer Street imprint, Sunset Over Hope Street, appeared in 2011, with The Fire Plays arriving the following year. In 2016 Hest partnered with legendary singer/songwriter Judy Collins on the collaborative studio album Silver Skies Blue.