Ben Goldberg / Scott Amendola Duo

Ben Goldberg - clarinets

Scott Amendola - drums/percussion/electronics

Ben Goldberg and Scott Amendola have been playing music together for over 3 decades. Tunes, improv, who knows what's going to happen, but their long storied history will for certain make it for an interesting evening.

Both utilize electronics and have a deep love of Thelonious Monk. Stretching the boundaries of jazz, and improvisation, at one minute there could be a stream of sound. The next a composition. The deep intuitive nature of Ben and Scott can only make for an evening of deep, fun, and joyous music.

Clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg grew up in Denver. 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. The New York Times says Ben’s music “conveys a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising.” Downbeat Magazine has twice named him Rising Star Clarinetist. During the Covid-19 quarantine, Ben began PLAGUE DIARY, with the goal of writing and recording a new piece every day. PLAGUE DIARY is offered free of charge on Bandcamp, and now has over 200 tracks. Ben has released over thirty records of his own compositions, ranging from further explorations of traditional Jewish music, through jazz, to the uncategorizable. The Wall Street Journal called Good Day for Cloud Fishing, his recent album featuring poems by Dean Young, “a stellar document of small-group jazz.” Ben leads many groups of his own and plays in Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom. He is on the Music faculty at the University of California, Berkeley and runs BAG Production Records.

For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, and Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, and clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz. No project better displays Amendola’s big ears and musical ambitions than “Fade To Orange,” an orchestral piece commissioned as part of the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s Irvine Foundation-funded New Visions/New Vistas initiative. The roiling work premiered to critical acclaim at Oakland’s Paramount Theater on April 15, 2011.

As a sideman, Amendola has performed and recorded with a vast, stylistically varied roster of artists, including Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Mondo Cane, John Scofield, Cibo Matto, John Dieterich from Deerhoof, Wadada Leo Smith, Bruce Cockburn, Madeleine Peyroux, Joan Osborne, Jacky Terrasson, Shweta Jhaveri, Phil Lesh, Sex Mob, Kelly Joe Phelps, Larry Klein, Carla Bozulich, Wayne Horvitz, Johnny Griffin, Julian Priester, Sonny Simmons, Pat Martino, Jim Campilongo, Bobby Black, Larry Goldings, Paul McCandless, Rebecca Pidgeon, and the Joe Goode Dance Group.