Ben Goldberg to Release Second “School” Album

from the Bandcamp Web page

Back in 2017 clarinetist Ben Goldberg released an album on his BAG Production Records label entitled Ben Goldberg School — Vol. 1: The Humanities. I had been listening to Goldberg’s music ever since my wife found a copy of Junk Genius and figured that it would interest me. Since it was a thoroughly engaging anthology of several of the adventurous (if also drug-addled) pioneers of the bebop movement, my wife definitely made the right call.

However, my interest did not result in writing until January 2011, when Clarinet Thing (which was founded by Beth Custer and included Sheldon Brown and Harvey Wainapel, as well as Goldberg) presented a Salons at the Rex program for San Francisco Performances. After that, I became more aware of Goldberg’s recordings and tried to collect as many of them as I could. Mind you, not all of them were as explicit in content as Junk Genius; but there was never any shortage of attention-prompting content.

2011 was also the year in which Goldberg founded the sextet called the Ben Goldberg School. The other five musicians were Kasey Knudsen on alto saxophone, Jeff Cressman on trombone, Rob Reich alternating between accordion and piano, David Ewell on bass, and Hamir Atwal on drums. Any connection between the seven tracks on that album and the humanities is left as an exercise for the listener. Goldberg served as composer, but it is clear that all the musicians had their own opportunities to invent. As Goldberg put it, the idea of a “school” involved “the role of musicians as gatherers and transmitters of value across time.”

One week from today, that spanning of time will advance to the second “volume” to be released by the Ben Goldberg School. This one is entitled Hard Science; and, as the hyperlink indicates, Bandcamp is currently processing pre-orders for both the limited edition compact disc and the digital offering, which includes both streaming and download. Once again, while Goldberg can be credited as composer, all the members of the sextet were encouraged to exercise in-the-moment spontaneity. Goldberg is still joined by Knudsen, Cressman, Reich (now only on accordion), and Atwal. However, Ewell has been replaced by Nate Brenner on electric bass.

The Bandcamp Web page also includes Goldberg’s background observations. That includes the following statement:

After this recording was made, I continued playing the material in solo concerts and with a trio of myself, Liberty Ellman, and Gerald Cleaver. I began calling the collection of tunes "Porch Concert Material."

As a result, while the seven tracks of The Humanities had titles that teased (if not defined) connections to the study of the humanities, all of the tracks on Hard Science carry the abbreviation “PCM” followed by a number, which may or may not relate to when that particular track was recorded. Perhaps this was Goldberg’s way of recognizing that “hard science” is more “abstract” than any of the branches of the humanities. On the other hand, Goldberg may have only been interested in stimulating the imagination, which would lead to sentences like this one’s predecessor!

Goldberg clearly draws his capacity for invention from a very deep well. As was the case with The Humanities,  Hard Science is all about those acts of inventions (assuming that it is “about” anything at all). Each track has its own birth through spontaneity, and it is up to the attentive listener to engage with the results of that spontaneity.

Happy listening!