Ben Goldberg

Clarinetist Ben Goldberg functions as a creative force in improvisation, composition, and musical theory, repeatedly redefining the instrument's presence across jazz, new music, klezmer, classical, and pop. Shaped in particular by saxophonist Steve Lacy's example, he has investigated formats ranging from solo, duo, and trio performances to expansive group efforts marked by intricate polyphonic writing and collective improvisation. Highly regarded as a supporting player, he has joined forces with Marty Ehrlich, John Zorn, Charlie Hunter, Allison Miller, and additional artists. Longstanding affiliations also connect him to the broad Tin Hat collective and the New Klezmer Trio. Leading his own projects, he has delivered exploratory statements such as the 1992 duo recording The Relative Value of Things alongside Kenny Wollesen, the 2006 Lacy-inflected The Door, The Hat, The Chair, The Fact, and the 2015 nonet session Orphic Machine, which drew on poet Allen Grossman's writings.

Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Goldberg completed an undergraduate music degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz before obtaining a Master of Arts in Composition from Mills College. Studying under Rosario Mazzeo, Steve Lacy, and Joe Lovano, he first gained recognition through the New Klezmer Trio, which debuted in 1991 with Masks and Faces. Two years afterward he secured a National Endowment for the Arts grant to organize a retrospective series featuring important American jazz composers such as Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols, an endeavor realized in partnership with Andrew Hill and Bobby Bradford. Following the 1993 duo album The Relative Value of Things with Kenny Wollesen, Goldberg returned in 1995 with another New Klezmer Trio release, Melt Zonk Rewire. He further contributed to Snorkel's 1996 Live at the Elbo Room. In 1998 he fronted four separate projects—Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin, Twelve Minor, Here by Now, and What Comes Before—then closed the decade as part of the Junk Genius band with Kenny Wollesen, Trevor Dunn, and John Schott on Ghost of Electricity.

Goldberg opened the following decade with Short for Something, the New Klezmer Trio's third Tzadik outing. He also issued Almost Never, a set of original compositions, alongside Dunn and Schott, appeared on Schott's Elegies for the Recording Angel, and recorded Helium with the Tin Hat Trio. In 2003 he arranged Voices in the Wilderness, a disc marking the tenth anniversary of John Zorn's Masada works. When Steve Lacy was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, Goldberg began reflecting on the soprano saxophonist's profound impact as composer, bandleader, and soloist, resulting in quintet pieces featuring Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Rob Sudduth on saxophone, Devin Hoff on bass, and Ches Smith on drums. Captured shortly after Lacy's passing, the material appeared in 2006 as The Door, The Hat, The Chair, The Fact on Cryptogramophone, and the next year he obtained an Aaron Copland Fund for Music grant to compose and document additional works for the same ensemble. Goldberg further participated in Nels Cline's New Monastery: The Music of Andrew Hill.

Amid continued activity as composer and sideman, the trio album Plays Monk with Scott Amendola and Devin Hoff surfaced on Cryptogramophone during the subsequent two-year span. His output surged again in 2009 across multiple contexts, encompassing the trio date Speech Communication with Wollesen and Greg Cohen, Tin Hat's The Sad Machinery of Spring, Beth Custer's Clarinet Thing project Cry, Want, Myra Melford's Be Bread album The Whole Tree Gone, and a guest appearance on Xiu Xiu's La Forêt. After earlier nominations, Goldberg received the Alpert Award in the Arts in 2010. That year he inaugurated his own imprint, BAG Productions, with the quartet session Go Home featuring Charlie Hunter, Ron Miles, and Amendola, led another quartet on Baal: The Book of Angels, Vol. 15 drawn from Zorn's second Masada book, and recorded with Tin Hat for Foreign Legion. He was named Rising Star Clarinetist in the 2011 DownBeat Critic's Poll. Goldberg contributed to Aaron Novik's Secrets of Secrets on Tzadik in 2012, while Tin Hat issued The Rain Is a Handsome Animal, a seventeen-movement cycle inspired by e.e. cummings. Two further BAG releases arrived in 2013: the quintet recording Unfold Ordinary Mind and Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues, taped in 2008 with a short-lived group that included saxophonist Joshua Redman. Material from 2010 sessions with Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich and Amendola finally emerged in 2014 as Short-Sighted Dream Colossus, the same period in which Goldberg held a residency at The Stone in New York.

Early in 2015 he unveiled the nonet project Orphic Machine on BAG. Conceived initially in 2008, the album took its impetus from the late poet, professor, and MacArthur Fellow Allen Grossman's volume Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetry. He later joined Nels Cline, Ron Miles, and Dean Young for 2019's Good Day for Cloud Fishing.