Ben Goldberg - Orphic Machine (2015/2019) [Hi-Res]

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