Go Home

GO HOME Ben Goldberg - clarinet Charlie Hunter - seven string guitar Ron Miles - trumpet, cornet Scott Amendola - drums "The band creates music that is cozy and spacious, pungent and perfumed, virtuosic, sophisticated and pleasingly raw." -- The Boston Globe "A searching ensemble that welcomes lyrical improvisation while embracing the groove." --The New Yorker "Go Home speaks to a fascinating creative journey that has taken Goldberg from the esoteric realms of the avant-garde to the simple pleasures of syncopation and melody." -- Metro Santa Cruz: GO HOME has its origins in a recording project put together by Ben in April, 2008. Charlie, Scott, and Ben had been talking for a few years about recording together, and saw an opportunity when Scott and Ben would be at the Jazz Standard in New York for a week. Cornetist Ron Miles, who was in town with Bill Frisell, joined them for two days at the "old" Bunker studio in Williamsburg (there is now a "new" Bunker -- check it out). Ben provided the tunes and a lovely time was had by all. Ben says: Charlie, Scott, and I had been talking for a few years about recording together, and saw an opportunity when Scott and I would be at the Jazz Standard in New York for a week in April, 2008. Ron Miles was in town with Bill Frisell, and he joined us for two days at the Bunker studio in Williamsburg. I provided the tunes and a lovely time was had by all. Later, when I was thinking about it, the name Go Home came to me because the sound of the group is so direct and honest that for me it goes back to when I was little and music hit me so hard. Also, in For You Blue on Let It Be someone says "go home." The first cd by the group, GO HOME (BAG Production BAG001), combines this studio session with some tracks from a live recording at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, California in February, 2009. The rapport these musicians have with each other goes back to the vibrant Bay Area music scene of the 1990's, an incredibly fertile moment when musicians across a wide range of styles were working things out and learning from each other in clubs and concert spaces. One night might find Ben sitting in with Charlie and Scott in the Charlie Hunter Trio, followed by Charlie dropping by Scott and Ben's underground collage-based quartet Snorkel, while down the street Tin Hat Trio was developing a new kind of composition-based chamber jazz. As musicians went their separate ways and involved themselves in new projects, the lessons of this time continued to reverberate in the work of those who were part of it.