Watch the making of Ben Goldberg‘s most ambitious project yet, Orphic Machine.
Now available for purchase on 2-LP + CD.

On this latest album, 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. As described by Downbeat, “Goldberg has created a brilliant homage to Grossman with this sequence of musical settings of his teacher’s witty thoughts on poetics.”

Goldberg assembled an A-list cast of musicians to record Orphic Machine, including Ron Miles (Trumpet), Rob Sudduth (Tenor Saxophone), Myra Melford (Piano), Nels Cline (Guitar), Kenny Wollesen (Vibraphone, Chimes), Greg Cohen (Bass), and Ches Smith (Drums).