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Happy to announce that I have been awarded a 2010 New Jazz Works: Commissioning and Ensemble Development grant from Chamber Music America and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.  The idea is to write a piece for my Quintet and guests, based on the work of Allen Grossman.  The first performance will likely be in the summer of 2011, so stay tuned!

Just a quick note -- Warren Allen interviewed me for All About Jazz.  You can find it at

http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=35902&pg=1

The conversation was a lot of fun and touched on some interesting topics, and Warren did a great job writing it up.  Have a look.

Ben.

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Dan Plonsey, who has just been named a USA Fellow by the organization United States Artists.  

I first met Dan around twenty years ago in Berkeley.  Sheldon Brown and I were playing duets on the street and Dan walked by so we were introduced.  Dan plays the saxophone and writes music that is plain spoken and very direct, just like his speaking style, and also can be extremely weird, but as if it comes from a planet where extremely weird is perfectly normal -- there is nothing contrived or artificial about it.  I remember watching him play his way out of an enormous paper bag, and I once played the part of the ghost in a production of Hamlet that he directed using improvising musicians at Venue 9 in San Francisco (can't remember exactly how that one worked).

Dan curated the concert series at Berkeley's legendary Beanbenders for many years and the place reflected his values: cheerful, reasonable, open-minded.  One of my favorite records of his is Understanding Human Behavio.  For me Dan's art and music are the tragedy of innocence -- this record gets it pretty well, and the story that he wrote in the booklet will break your heart.  

To find out more about Dan's activities, including the opera that he wrote with Harvey Pekar and his group Daniel Popsicle, you should visit his website.

Hi Everyone,

Had a lovely tour of the East Coast with Go Home (me, Charlie Hunter, Scott Amendola, Curtis Fowlkes), culminating in four nights at the Jazz Standard in New York.  We were up against the World Series and Halloween but people still came out to hear the music!  Needless to say, with that much playing, the music really went somewhere.  We played ten sets in those four nights, and each set had its own character, its own topics, its own explorations, and its own problems. Plus I had a chance to get a lot more relaxed talking on the mic in between songs -- look out!

Now back home and getting ready for the Clarinet Thing cd release party Monday November 16 at Yoshi's SF (see Calendar), and we are preparing a live Tin Hat cd -- advance copies for sale at our Freight and Salvage concert on December 2.

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the new website.  There are two addresses that will get you here: bengoldberg.net, and bagproductionrecords.com.  This will be the place to find general information about me, keep track of where I am playing, read an occasional thought, and, if you like, buy cd's from the store.

All the artwork on the website is by Molly Barker, from a series of Circus cards she produced in 1998.  For those not familiar with Molly's work, I would recommend some of her amazing handmade books (available here), as well as Secret Language, a longer work published by City Lights.  I am hoping to be able to offer Molly's work for sale on this site soon.

This website was designed and built by Nik So.  It is very much a work-in-progress and we will be refining it as we go along, so if you have any suggestions please let us know.

Thanks,

Ben