Orphic Machine Ben Goldberg

• 1 Reading 10:10
• 2 Line of Less Than Ten 06:13
• 3 Bongoloid Lens 03:11
• 4 Immortality 12:05
• 5 The Inferential Poem 03:52
• 6 How To Do Things With Tears 01:37
• 7 Care 13:22
• 8 The Present 06:38
• 9 What Was That 05:57
• 10 The Orphic Machine 12:43
• Total Runtime 01:15:48

Info for Orphic Machine

Orphic Machine, the most ambitious and evocative work of Goldberg s career, is also within the evolution of his courageously experimental music, from 1992, when New Klezmer Trio 'kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music' (San Francisco Chronicle), to 2013 s Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues and Unfold Ordinary Mind, which the New York Times noted for 'a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising,'

With gorgeous melodies, unstoppable grooves, and lush sonic feel, Orphic Machine will appeal to pop music fans as well as devotees of new and experimental music.

In 1978 I attended Brandeis University for one year as a freshman. It was my good fortune to get thrown into a dorm room with Tass Bey, a young man from Montreal who believed in the transformational power of literature to a degree beyond anybody I had previously encountered. Tass introduced me to pre-White Album Beatles and the writing of Leonard Cohen. Later he was to introduce me to some other things, but first he instructed me to enroll in a literature course entitled The Representation of Experience taught by a man called Allen Grossman. That course hit me very hard. We read old books – The Bible, Gilgamesh, Moby-Dick, etc., and Professor Grossman showed us into a world where reading, thought, meaning, action, and understanding came together. I wouldn’t say he taught us – it’s more like he embodied the business of knowing.

Years later, finding my way out of a dark period of life, I developed a sudden thirst for poetry. I got in touch with the poet Susan Stewart after I heard echoes of Allen Grossman in her work. Susan invited me to attend a 2006 gathering in honor of Professor Grossman’s retirement from Johns Hopkins where he read powerfully from his poems. I began studying a book of his called Summa Lyrica: A Primer of the Commonplaces in Speculative Poetics... more

Carla Kihlstedt, vocals, violin
Ben Goldberg, Bb clarinet, contra alto clarinet
Ron Miles, trumpet
Rob Sudduth, tenor saxophone
Myra Melford, piano
Nels Cline, guitar
Kenny Wollesen, vibraphone, orchestra bells, drums
Greg Cohen, bass
Ches Smith, drums

Recorded by Ron Saint Germain at Sear Sound, New York
Produced by David Breskin

Ben Goldberg
Clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg grew up in Denver, Colorado. He was a pupil of the eminent clarinetist Rosario Mazzeo and studied with Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano. Since 1992, when his group New Klezmer Trio “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (SF Chronicle), Ben has shaped a career through curiosity and experimentation across many genres and styles. The New York Times has noted that Ben’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising, the constant usefulness of musicians intuitively coming together and pulling apart.” He has twice been named Rising Star Clarinetist by Downbeat Magazine.

Ben has released over thirty records of his own compositions. His groups include: Invisible Guy; Tin Hat; Orphic Machine; Unfold Ordinary Mind; The Cool Philosophy of Ben Goldberg; DIALOGUE, a duo with pianist / composer Myra Melford; the Ben Goldberg Trio with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen; Ben Goldberg School; and Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild, an eleven piece ensemble performing Ben’s on-the-spot compositions. Ben plays in Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom and is on the Music faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He also runs BAG Production Records.

This album contains no booklet.