Bio:
Duane Benjamin is an accomplished musician, orchestrator and arranger who plays trombone and electric bass. Ben-jamin as he is affectionately known, has performed and recorded with the top industry legends.
In jazz, Ben-jamin has performed with the Count Basie Orchestra, The Gerald Wilson Orchestra and The Clayton – Hamilton Orchestra, and The Paul McDonald Big Band. He is currently featured on the Heart and Soul of Mel Carter record. In the contemporary field Ben-jamin has performed and recorded with Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Barry White, Earth Wind and Fire, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, The OJays, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, and Gladys Knight to name a few legends of the past. Justin Timberlake, Joss Stone, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, Steve Vai, Jamiroquai, Vanessa Williams, Stanley Clark, Weird Al Yankovic and Kirk Franklin are some of the current artists Ben-jamin has performed with.
As an orchestrator Ben-jamin has worked for several artist and television shows. He's done arrangements for Aretha Franklin's live show, and his orchestrations are featured regularly on the hit television show American Idol and The Voice.
He has also arranged and orchestrated for television shows like NBC's The Singing Bee, BETS Gospel Celebration where he orchestrated for artists like Keyshia Cole, Jill Scott, Alexander Hamilton, and Al Green.
Ben-jamin, along with singer extraordinaire Meloney Collins, were the headline act for the Mammoth Lakes Jazz Festival for several years running. They have also collaborated on 2 CDs, A Little Jazz Now & Then and Mel Collins Live In La Guna.
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).