Michael Coleman and Ben Goldberg are happy to announce the release of their new record “PRACTITIONER.” This record, three years in the making, is based on Steve Lacy’s Hocus Pocus - Book ‘H’ of “Practitioners”.
BEN GOLDBERG SAYS:
“In 1985 I took a lesson from Steve Lacy. I was in Paris a lot and would go to the Sunset to hear Steve and politely beg for a lesson. Finally he relented, saying, ‘I have a soft spot for clarinetists.’ We spent the afternoon at his place on Rue du Temple and Steve prescribed some exercises for investigating the basic elements of music. At the end of our meeting he gave me a copy of a new record of his, called Hocus Pocus.”
STEVE LACY WRITES:
“These pieces were written (‘83) for my own use, as exercises and studies for the saxophone. Deliberately made so as to be hard to play, they also contain many of the characteristic ‘licks’, which comprise the language that I use, in the the different kinds of improvisational musics that I perform in. Each piece is also a portrait of, and an homage to, a distinguished practitioner of a particular art.”
Since Steve was a baseball fan, each cd comes with a pack of 12 baseball cards depicting the artists to whom Lacy dedicated his pieces, along with the people who made the record happen, and of course Steve himself. Each card has a portrait by Molly Barker and an original poem by the likes of Dean Young, J. Kathleen White, Paul Muldoon, Heather de Guzman Gordon, Clark Coolidge, Molly Barker, SNEAL, Babs Gonzalez, Jake Marmer, and Jesse Rimler.
Michael Coleman & Ben Goldberg at the Maybeck
Thursday, April 19, 2018 at 7:00pm
This concert is $25 General Admission
Seating is limited. Get your required online reservation here.
Seating is limited. Get your required online reservation here.
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.”
Ben currently leads the following groups: Invisible Guy; Orphic Machine; Unfold Ordinary Mind; 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.
Michael Coleman is a pianist, improviser and composer currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from Oberlin College where he studied history and jazz piano. After graduation, Michael headed out to Oakland, CA where he began his career as a composer and sideman, working with Bay Area greats such as Scott Amendola, Marcus Shelby, Ben Goldberg and countless other improvising musicians and songwriters. His own groups include Beep!, Arts & Sciences and CavityFang as well as the song writing project known as Young Nudist in which Michael plays all of the instruments and uses home recording as part of his compositional process. When constructing Young Nudist songs, Michael uses experimental recording techniques to create unique textures and sounds. These are then pieced together to create a jigsaw puzzle of melodies and harmonies that are at once mysterious and familiar. Apart from performing and touring tirelessly with his own bands, Michael has toured the world with Chris Cohen, tUnE-yArDs, Sean Hayes, Miles Kurosky and Jug Free America is currently working as the manager and house engineer at Figure 8 Recording in Brooklyn.