Description
Featuring Carla Kihlstedt (Voice, Violin), Ben Goldberg (Clarinet), Ron Miles (Trumpet), Rob Sudduth (Tenor Saxophone), Myra Melford (Piano), Nels Cline (Guitar), Kenny Wollesen (Vibraphone, Chimes), Greg Cohen (Bass), Ches Smith (Drums)
“Goldberg has created a brilliant homage to Grossman with this sequence of musical settings of his teacher’s witty thoughts on poetics” – Downbeat
“…a suite of beautiful, intricate and strangely compelling songs, lit up by improvisations flavored with muted trumpet, distorted electric guitar and many other colors..artfully orchestrated with horn chorales and counterpoint” – SF Chronicle
“Combining deft improvisation, accessible melodies and deceptively complex compositions, this is an album that rewards both cursory and in-depth listening.” – Elmore Magazine
On his new album, Orphic Machine, clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg creates his most beautiful and lyrical music to date. Goldberg’s songs, brought to exquisite life by vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, derive lyrics from an unlikely source: not poetry, but a book on “speculative poetics” by Goldberg’s former professor and MacArthur Fellow Allen Grossman.