Kenny Warren, Liberty Ellman, Raffi Garabedian, Ben Goldberg

About

Kenny Warren, trumpet Liberty Ellman, guitar Raffi Garabedian, saxophone Ben Goldberg, clarinet $20 cover. Trumpeter/composer Kenny Warren grew up in Denver and has lived in NYC since 2006. He has made over a dozen records as a bandleader and solo artist, has performed all over the world, and was recognized by Downbeat Magazine as a Raising Star in 2025. In 2024 his trio Sweet World with cellist Christopher Hoffman and drummer Nathan Ellman-Bell released an LP on Out of Your Head Records which the Best of Bandcamp hailed as “the sonic representation of a beating heart”. He has also made 3 LPs with his avant-country outfit Laila and Smitty, two jazz records for the London based Whirlwind Recordings, and a series of covid-era solo records which are available exclusively on bandcamp. Warren's 20 plus years in Brooklyn have produced a body of work in conversation with generations of the city's greatest musical artists. Current NY based collaborations include work with the original-song-driven band Slow Tiger, an improvised collective with Carlo Costa & BlankFor.ms, and a duo with Gregg Belisle-Chi. Warren is also a frequent collaborator with the Berlin based artist, Jeremy Viner, and the Denver based band Mountain Coast. Warren is a member of the Webber/Morris Big Band, two stellar Stephan Crump ensembles: Passarine and Slow Water, and of the Angelica Sanchez Nonet. Other recent side-person appearances include work with Marta Sanchez, Caroline Davis, Tony Malaby, Jamie Baum, Brad Shepik, Noah Garabedian and Brian Krock. Warren is also a longstanding member of the brass band Slavic Soul Party who has held a weekly residency at Barbès in Brooklyn for over 22 years. Warren’s music draws inspiration from Black American music, folk and classical music traditions around the world, and the global improvisational music scene. He has found his voice with help from his vibrant community of musicians in Brooklyn, and with wisdom from his childhood trumpet heroes in Denver, Ron Miles, Greg Gisbert and Al Hood. Guitarist / composer / educator Liberty Ellman has performed and or recorded with a host of stand out creative artists including: Joe Lovano, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Greg Osby, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Nels Cline, Somi, Nicole Mitchell, Ledisi, JD Allen, Michele Rosewoman, Adam Rudolph, Stephan Crump, Jonathan Finlayson, Okkyung Lee, and Ches Smith. In 2014 Ellman performed in “ Luanda Kinshasa ”, a video installation by visionary filmmaker Stan Douglas and Jason Moran. Mr. Ellman has been teaching privately and at various institutions over the last 20 years, including The New School and U.C. Berkeley. Played faculty concerts at the California Jazz Conservatory with Dave Liebman, Mark Turner and Terri Lyne Carrington. Mr. Ellman is perhaps best known for his long tenure in Henry Threadgill's groundbreaking ensemble, Zooid. The group has recorded several critically lauded albums. Their recording "In For A Penny, In For A Pound" earned a Pulitzer prize for Mr. Threadgill. In addition to playing guitar, Mr. Ellman is credited as producer and mixing engineer on that recording. He has mixed and mastered many other recordings as well, including Gregory Porter's "Be Good," which was nominated for a Grammy. Other engineering credits are on albums by Sam Rivers, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Marc Ribot, Steve Coleman, Wadada Leo Smith, Tyshawn Sorey. More credits here. As a composer and bandleader Mr. Ellman has produced several critically acclaimed recordings including: Orthodoxy (Red Giant Records), Tactiles, Ophiuchus Butterfly, Radiate, and Last Desert (Pi Recordings). Ellman’s compositional style has been described as "At once highly controlled and recklessly inventive,” and “quite original and subtle." Ben Ratliff of the New York Times wrote: “Mr. Ellman's ballads are special, exotic things: their melodies are memorable.” Quote from the Wall Street Journal: “Along with his contemporaries, Mr. Ellman is helping define the sound of jazz in the 21st century.” Voted #1 Rising Star Guitarist in the 2016 Downbeat Critics Poll, he was also honored in the 2015 Jazz Times expanded critics poll, as one of the four guitarists of the year alongside Bill Frisell, John Scofield and Julian Lage. Liberty Ellman has also worked beyond the jazz world: hip hop artists Midnight Voices, and The Coup, dance producer DJ Joe Claussell, and worked on remixes of N'Dea Davenport, Chico Freeman, Ann Dyer, Ayo and others. He also made an appearance on the Grammy nominated Groove Collective record, People People Music Music. Tenor saxophonist/composer Raffi Garabedian lives in Oakland, California. A dedicated improvisationalist, Garabedian utilizes spontaneous composition to create sonic atmospheres in which different perspectives on rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic progression can take shape. Garabedian’s compositional work remains strongly informed by his relationship with improvisation, a relationship which expresses itself in unique ways. His second record, Melodies in Silence , was marked in part by the remote nature of its recording, which opened new avenues in terms of production and processing. A record in part of grief and loneliness, Melodies in Silence allowed Garabedian to deepen and broaden the possibilities for composition and playing communal music when alone. On 2024’s The Crazy Dog , Garabedian began writing for voice—which he treated as a part of the horn section—in part of a cross-generational effort to bring his own, his father’s, and his grandmother’s voices into one piece of art. The result is what Downbeat calls a “deeply personal and musically inventive” work, full of “complex, contrapuntal ambitions.” Garabedian was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and attended the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, from which he received a BFA in Jazz Performance. He has toured extensively—both at the helm of his own projects, and as a member of other groups—and has played and recorded with luminaries such as Jorge Rossy, Ben Street, Dayna Stephens, and Johnny Talbot. Garabedian also plays in several projects in and around the Bay Area, including Insect Life—a group focusing on collective improvisation, with Ben Goldberg (clarinet), Danny Lubin-Laden (trombone), Ben Davis (cello), and Gerald Cleaver (drums)—and Sticklerphonics, again with Lubin-Laden, and Scott Amendola (drums). In addition to his music practice, Garabedian is a seasoned educator, and is on the jazz saxophone faculty at Sonoma State University, while teaching at Berkeley High School. He has taught regularly at the California Jazz Conservatory, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, and works with private students. Ben Goldberg took to the clarinet as a child, admiring the Noblett his mother kept in a drawer after her college years and learning the rudiments from his fourth grade music teacher reservation gary