What's Up?
I do sessions in and out of my studio, teach private and online lessons and write my own music.
Life & Work
Bio:
Ben Azar represents a new breed of ultra-versatile guitar players and musicians which derives their ideas, style and taste from a broad and diverse range of sources.
A former New Yorker and now Israeli-based. Ben's career drifts from playing and touring as a side-man with established rock acts, such as guitar legend Marty Friedman (Megadeath, Cacophony) and Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal (Guns n Roses), playing gospel (Hill Of The Lord Ministries in Brooklyn) to playing a verity of pop and ethnic/Middle-Eastern styles with local Israeli superstars, and of-course playing jazz concerts as a side man and as a leader with his group.
Ben's unique approach to music can be heard on his debut album "Organized Memories" (2011) which was released on Greg Osby's label, INNER CIRCLE Music. With his jazz guitar-based trio, his music reflects diverse influences and features intricate and lyrical compositions with a modern approach to improvisation. Ben brings to his music influences from all over the musical spectrum. From Mediterranean music, reflecting his early childhood in Israel, Rock music which reflect his teens, and Jazz music which reflect his late teens and twenties. Due to his international career the album, has reached far places of the world, to different kinds of music lovers, and is played in a variety of US and Israeli radio stations. Engineer Michael Perez-Cisneros (worked with Kurt Rosenwinkel, Eli Degibri, Omer Avital) mixed and mastered the album. He captured the intense performances of drummer Ziv Ravitz (Lee Konitz, Omer Klein, Shai Maestro) and acoustic bassist Daniel Ori (ASCAP Jazz Composers Award Winner of 2009).
In 2004 Ben received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. He graduated with honours in 2007 with a double major in contemporary writing and production and performance. He studied under such luminaries as Mick Goodrick, Joe Lovano, Dave "Fuze" Fiuczynski, George Garzone, David Tronzo and more. While attending Berklee Ben has sharpen not only his instrumental skills, but also his writing and producing skills. Giving him a wider overview on his music and making it more accessible to the non musicians or academic crowd.
Writing music for bands, WEBSITES and movies also give Ben his diverse and unique sound. Having said that, with all the vast influences, it is very important for Ben to keep his music organic and natural sounding, he treats it like a living, breathing being.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).