Aaron Goldberg via Matrix

The Birth of the Matrix →

No princípio...

Imagine um Facebook que seria mais sobre pessoas que você não conhece do que sobre pessoas que você conhece. E ainda mais importante: sobre pessoas que não o conhecem, mas cujas vidas seriam enriquecidas se o conhecessem.

Imagine uma versão atualizada do antigo Myspace Music, que incluiria não apenas músicos, mas todos da economia criativa global da humanidade.

E imagine que ao invés de ter "amigos", recomendaria as pessoas pelo que fazem...

E que, por alguma mágica fantástica, todos nessa rede imaginária tenderiam a estar a poucos passos de todos os outros, o que significa que todos em nossa rede seriam potencialmente encontrados por todos os outros na rede, e no planeta.

Você está imaginando o Matrix (Rede Online)!

Esse Matrix baiano foi fundado (com afeto!) numa questão fundamental: Como é possível fazer com que os músicos mais importantes historicamente do Brasil sejam descobertos por pessoas que vivem em qualquer lugar da Terra?

A resposta foi incluí-los num matrix no sentido original da palavra: “fonte”, de “mater”, latim para “mãe”...

...um matrix que também incluiria membros da economia criativa de todo o mundo: escritores e jornalistas, pintores, cineastas, coreógrafos, programadores de computador, designers de som e cenografia, designers de moda, matemáticos…

Por este meio, podemos pessoalmente alcançar profundamente a realidade da economia criativa global que está realmente lá fora: Roberto Mendes de Santo Amaro pode recomendar João do Boi de São Braz. Munir Hossn de Salvador, mas agora morando em Paris, pode recomendar Roberto Mendes. Alfredo Rodriguez de Havana, mas agora morando em Nova York, pode recomendar Munir Hossn. E Quincy Jones de Los Angeles pode recomendar Alfredo Rodriguez. Quem conhece Quincy Jones agora pode descobrir João do Boi (entre os músicos absolutamente mais fundamentais do Brasil) em apenas quatro passos.

Este não é um exemplo isolado. Caminhos curtos de apenas alguns passos entre pessoas criativas amplamente díspares são universais em todo o Matrix. Tal é o fantástico poder matemático do fenômeno do pequeno mundo, o fenômeno responsável pelos "seis graus de separação", unindo a maioria dos seres humanos à maioria dos outros em cerca de seis passos. Essa é a superpotência do Matrix baiano.

O Matrix baiano está aberta a todos da economia criativa global. Foi construído numa loja de discos no Centro Histórico de Salvador por um americano que trabalhou anteriormente em Nova York recuperando royalties não pagos para artistas como Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens (Yusef Islam), Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto, o primeiro produtor de Bob Marley, Clement Dodd, o mestre de jazz Jim Hall e outros.

Agora o projeto é mostrar ao mundo o que é que a Bahia tem. Ao permitir que todos na economia criativa global também podem estender a mão ao redor do mundo e mostram ao mundo o que é que eles têm.

O Matrix é capaz de atingir profundamente... esta é a vila de São Braz, no Recôncavo baiano, criada por escravizados que escaparam para uma liberdade marginal...

In the beginning...

Imagine a Facebook that would be more about people you don't know than people you do know. And even more importantly: about people who don't know you but whose lives would be enriched if they did.

Imagine an updated version of old Myspace Music, which would include not just musicians but all in humanity's global creative economy.

And imagine that rather than having "friends", one would recommend people for what they do...

And that by some fantastic magic everybody in this imaginary network would tend to be within scant steps of everybody else, meaning that everybody in our network would be potentially findable by everybody else in the network, and on the planet.

You are imagining the Matrix (Online Network)!

This Bahian Matrix was founded (with love!) on a fundamental question: How is it possible to make Brazil’s most historically important musicians discoverable by people living anywhere around the Earth?

The answer was to include them in a matrix in the original sense of the word: “source”, from “mater”, Latin for “mother”...

...a matrix which would also include members of the creative economy from everywhere else: writers and journalists, painters, filmmakers, choreographers, computer programmers, sound and set designers, fashion designers, mathematicians…

By this means we can personally reach deeply into the reality of the global creative economy that is really out there: Roberto Mendes of Santo Amaro can recommend João do Boi of São Braz. Munir Hossn of Salvador but now living in Paris can recommend Roberto Mendes. Alfredo Rodriguez of Havana but now living in New York City can recommend Munir Hossn. And Quincy Jones of Los Angeles can recommend Alfredo Rodriguez. Anybody who knows Quincy Jones can now discover João do Boi (top photo; "John of the Ox" in English, the vastly important Son House of Brazil) in just four steps.

This is not an isolated example. Short pathways of just a few steps between widely disparate creative people are universal throughout the Matrix. Such is the fantastic mathematical power of the small world phenomenon, the phenomenon responsible for “six degrees of separation”, joining most human beings to most others within some six or so steps. This is the Bahian Matrix’s superpower.

The Bahian Matrix is open to all in the global creative economy. It was built in a record shop in Salvador’s Centro Histórico by an American who formerly worked in New York city retrieving unpaid royalties for artists including Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens (Yusef Islam), Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Mongo Santamaria, Ray Barretto, Bob Marley’s first producer Clement Dodd, jazz great Jim Hall and others.

Now the project is to show the world o que é que a Bahia tem (what it is that Bahia has). By letting everybody in the global creative economy likewise reach out across the planet to connect as they wish and show the world what it is that they have too.

The Matrix is capable of reaching deeply...this is João's village of São Braz, in the Bahian Recôncavo, created by enslaved who'd escaped to a marginal freedom...

ALL IS CLOSER THAN WE IMAGINE
(Imagine Aaron Goldberg) I RECOMMEND
You can recommend Aaron Goldberg from below when logged in ←

CURATION

from this node by: Matrix

This is the Universe of

Name: Aaron Goldberg
City/Place: New York City
Country: United States

Life & Work

Bio: Hailed by Down Beat magazine for his “quick-witted harmonic reflexes, fluid command of line and cut-to-the- chase sense of narrative logic,” Aaron Goldberg has made his name as one of jazz’s most compelling pianists, both as a bandleader and frequent collaborator with Joshua Redman, Wynton Marsalis, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Guillermo Klein and many more. On his most recent release The Now, Goldberg reunites with bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland, the virtuoso rhythm team going all the way back to his 1998 debut Turning Point. On their fifth outing together, the trio foregrounds a central truth about the art of playing jazz: that no two performances will be the same because the music is created, in Goldberg’s words, “in the dynamic plane of the present.”

“A jazz record is literally one moment in time,” Goldberg explains. “Each song captures those five minutes, and not more. This is especially counterintuitive when you think about iconic jazz recordings like Kind of Blue, where we can all sing every solo. That record would sound totally different, we’d all be singing different solos, if it’d been recorded five minutes later or even five seconds later. That aspect of jazz is what makes it magical for me. I think every time you make an album you contribute to this illusion that jazz operates like other forms of music, where you figure out the song, you practice it, you play it a million times, then you record the definitive version. Jazz doesn’t work like that, and I felt it was time to explicitly wrestle with this in some thematic way.”

In every idiomatic zone from Brazilian ballads to roaring bebop, Goldberg and the trio have a way of spontaneously sculpting every bar as it flows by, like a wave on a river. That Rogers and Harland have also spent the last few years working with master saxophonist Charles Lloyd has deepened their communication and subtlety beyond measure. With Goldberg, they revel in the lesser-explored corners of jazz repertoire, bringing wit, explosive chops and also keen understatement to bear on the music at hand.

“I met Reuben back in 1992 in Boston, when he was going to Berklee and I was going to Harvard,” Goldberg recalls. “He had just started playing upright bass. Eric I met in 1997, playing with [saxophonist] Greg Tardy. I felt an instant connection with them. There was never a feeling of having to tell them what I want or even what I want the trio to sound like. It was intuitive in the way that friendships are, or romantic relationships. It feels right and you find yourself growing, discovering things, getting somewhere new that you wouldn’t have gotten to alone. When you feel that connection, it opens a path to your subconscious — you can escape your preconceptions, the need for an agenda, and you can just let the music be.”

Goldberg became a jazz devotee in Boston during high school. After spending a year in New York City at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, he enrolled at Harvard College and graduated magna cum laude in 1996 with a concentration in Mind, Brain and Behavior. A founding member of Betty Carter’s famed and indispensable Jazz Ahead program, he continued his ascent performing in bands led by Al Foster, Freddie Hubbard, Nicholas Payton, Stefon Harris and Mark Turner among others. By the late 1990s, he was garnering wider attention, and an incessant touring schedule found him both inspired by music from around the world yet appreciative of the zen creativity that only jazz demands.

On Chico Buarque’s “Trocando em Miúdos” (roughly, “settling the small things” in Brazilian Portuguese), Goldberg and his partners reveal the sense of inner dynamism and flux that perfectly embodies the concept of The Now. “It’s a song about a couple that has broken up and they have to divide up all their common belongings,” the pianist says. “I heard it at a point when I was ending a long relationship and dealing with many of the same emotions, so I had a kind of total body experience of the song. It was a song I needed to play. In the studio was the second time we ever tried it, so it was being worked out in the moment and it has that explorative quality.”

Extending the Brazilian theme, Goldberg interprets Djavan’s “Triste Baía da Guanabara” and Toninho Horta’s “Francisca” with great lyrical and virtuosic flair. “There’s a deep Brazilian songwriting tradition, every bit as deep as our American songwriting tradition,” Goldberg says. “In the same way that our Tin Pan Alley composers were thinking equally about melody, harmony and lyrics, these Brazilian composers were also synthesizing melody, harmony, lyrics — and their best songs are pristine in all respects simultaneously.”

“Yo Yo” is a traditional Haitian song with lyrics “about a guy who’s a seller in the market,” Goldberg says. “The idea is that he always gives you more meat or more vegetables than you ask for. Everybody loves him — the women in particular love Yo Yo because he always gives them more than they bargain for. It’s a great tune for improvising, oddly related to some more familiar standards like ‘Autumn Leaves.’ Rhythmically it’s open to many approaches even though there’s something deeply African in the groove. Reuben is from St. Thomas and has a very intuitive concept of a range of Caribbean music.”

Goldberg’s lyrical waltz “The Wind In the Night” is “basically a love song, where the male character is the Wind and the female character is the Night.” The subject of “E-Land,” meanwhile, is Eric Harland himself. Goldberg offers “a sort of introduction to the world of Eric, or at least one of his realms. I wanted to design an environment for him to unleash the 'drummer' side of himself. The piece has a few different sections, we move between them, and essentially he’s at liberty to do whatever he wants.”

Goldberg’s bread-and-butter jazz vocabulary, his mastery and sense of invention on blues and standards, is second to none. On The Now, he lends Charlie Parker’s “Perhaps” a twist: the melody is played one quarter note apart in the right and left hand. Warne Marsh’s “Background Music,” on the changes of “All of Me,” is jaw-dropping in its speed, precision and unrelenting swing: the trio at full blast. “One’s a Crowd,” in another twist, uses the chord changes to Joe Henderson’s “Serenity.” “On Worlds (2006), we recorded a tune called ‘Unstablemates,’ and this is a similarly respectful de-rangement,” says Goldberg. “‘Serenity’ has a 14-bar form, while ‘One’s a Crowd’ drops a bar to 13, which alone renders it less serene. Melodically and improvisationally it aims to capture that mood when you're alone but your inner voice won't stay quiet."

“One Life,” the closing track, brings Goldberg’s friend and sometime employer Kurt Rosenwinkel on board as a guest. The eerily peaceful, almost whistling sound of Rosenwinkel’s guitar has even more impact when one learns that Goldberg wrote “One Life” at the request of a married couple who had lost their teenage daughter. “It’s impossible to capture a life in music and I’d never met their daughter in person,” he says. “But their loss moved me, and I was moved that they asked. It took a long time just to sit at the piano and believe I could write something worthy of this one Life. We learned the song and then right before we recorded it, I told Kurt [about the dedication]. I watched him process this for a few minutes, he closed his eyes and sat with it. He didn’t even know the people involved, but he internalized the purpose and urgency. It’s hard to channel your emotions to that degree of depth in the studio, and Kurt was magnificent.”

Jazz has a way of summoning that kind of spirit from musicians, and Goldberg knows exactly how to capture it, surrounding himself with kindred spirits in pursuit of the highest expression. He and the trio embody the best of what jazz can be today: the ability to speak from deep within the tradition while putting their own collaborative imprint upon it. Combined with his personal take on jazz’s intangible and viscerally uplifting heritage, this makes Goldberg just the player to share all he knows about The Now.

Contact Information

Management/Booking: Management & Booking:
(Except France and Spain)
Sherry McAdams
McAdams Creative Management
t: 617-642-4702
mcadamscreativemgmt.com
e: [email protected]

France:
Genevieve Peyregne
Accords Productions
62 Bis, Rue Des Rondeaux
75020 Paris - France
m: +33614814677
e: g. [email protected]

Spain:
Ivan Pivotti
Marmaduke
Plaza Dolores Fernández 1, 2º D
41009 Sevilla Spain
t: +34954065525 m: +34607432345
Skype: ivanpivotti
marmaduke.info
e: [email protected]

Publicity:
Matt Merewitz
Fully Altered Media
o: 347-384-2839
m: 215-629-6155
www.fullyaltered.com
e: [email protected]

Label:
Francois Zalacain / President
Bret Sjerven / Distribution & Marketing
Sunnyside Records
t: 646-519-3560
sunnysiderecords.com
e: [email protected]

Media | Markets

▶ Twitter: agoldbergjazz
▶ Instagram: aarongoldbergmusic
▶ Website: http://aarongoldberg.com
▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqGcL5thcRJaTfYLhVU1nBg
▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCkJRo5KqnwI-V3PZJh7aGqw
▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/2n12HqIagVlEPeXY4hhWUs
▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/5rLbGsIApd7zvfde9mUFgH
▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/6EcJ7bR7B5JWBxbl70eOo4
▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/2AIeX18ZJJYLhzAt7gcJl6
▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/7fuNFXQOOlUxcSJlHlAnxA

Clips (more may be added)

Personal Evolution
By Aaron Goldberg

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Imagine the world's creative economy at your fingertips. Imagine 10 doors side-by-side. Beyond each, 10 more, each opening to a "creative" somewhere around the planet. After passing through 8 such doorways you will have followed 1 pathway out of 100 million possible (2 sets of doorways yield 10 x 10 = 100 pathways). This is a simplified version of the metamathematics that makes it possible to reach anybody in the global creative economy in just a few steps. It doesn't mean that everybody will be reached by everybody. It does mean that everybody can be reached by everybody.