News from Ben Goldberg

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Dear Friends,

I hope this note finds you healthy and enjoying the beginning of the New Year.

I wrote some thoughts about 2012 in an essay on my website; rather than send the entire thing around, I thought I would just invite you to pay a visit, and restrict this general email to a couple pieces of good news:

I am happy to announce that I have just received a major grant from The Shifting Foundation of Utah that will enable me to produce a proper recording of my major work of 2012, Orphic Machine. This is really great news, because given the scope of the work and the number of musicians involved, I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to produce a recording without this kind of generous help. (Videos from the premiere of Orphic Machine can be found on the BAG Production youtube channel).

The other thing I would like to mention here is the pending release of two new records on my BAG Production label.

Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues (BAG003) features Joshua Redman, tenor saxophone; Ron Miles, trumpet; Devin Hoff, bass; Ches Smith and Scott Amendola, drums. This was recorded back in 2008, it’s a swinging affair that I’m sure you’ll enjoy, and I’m happy that it will be seeing the light of day. Here is a track from the record: Joshua Redman and I playing a duet on my tune Study of the Blues.

Unfold Ordinary Mind (BAG004) features Nels Cline, guitar; Ellery Eskelin and Rob Sudduth, tenors saxophone; Ches Smith, drums; and on this one I am the bass player, on contra-alto clarinet. We made the record in one day and the results are raw and direct. Here we are playing my song xcpf. I should mention that in addition to creating the artwork for both of these albums, Molly Barker painted a beautiful accordion-fold booklet that is included with Unfold Ordinary Mind.