Ben Monder
“I started out playing rock, since that was the music I listened to – I never had much exposure to much else as a kid (save for my father’s classical records), and I liked to learn songs off the radio. When I decided to take lessons at age 14, the guitar instructor at the local music school was a jazz guitarist, so I kind of fell into it accidentally.”
Guitarist and composer Ben Monder was born in New York in 1962 and has been active as a musician in the New York area for over 30 years. He has performed with a wide variety of artists, including Jack McDuff, Marc Johnson, Lee Konitz, George Garzone, Paul Motian, Guillermo Klein and Maria Schneider. He continues to perform original music internationally with his own quartet, trio and in an ongoing duo project with vocalist Theo Bleckmann. He has appeared on over 130 CDs [...]
“I started out playing rock, since that was the music I listened to – I never had much exposure to much else as a kid (save for my father’s classical records), and I liked to learn songs off the radio. When I decided to take lessons at age 14, the guitar instructor at the local music school was a jazz guitarist, so I kind of fell into it accidentally.”
Guitarist and composer Ben Monder was born in New York in 1962 and has been active as a musician in the New York area for over 30 years. He has performed with a wide variety of artists, including Jack McDuff, Marc Johnson, Lee Konitz, George Garzone, Paul Motian, Guillermo Klein and Maria Schneider. He continues to perform original music internationally with his own quartet, trio and in an ongoing duo project with vocalist Theo Bleckmann. He has appeared on over 130 CDs as a sideman (including on David Bowie’s last studio album, Blackstar), and has released six albums as leader.
He first recorded for ECM as a member of the Paul Motian Band on Garden of Eden in 2004. Amorphae, his leader debut on the label, released in 2015, was originally conceived as a series of duets for Ben and Paul. A first exploratory duo session was recorded in 2010. After Motian's death the following year it was decided to expand and complete the project with another highly influential and innovative drummer, Andrew Cyrille, also adding Pete Rende on synthesiser on two pieces. “It’s pretty abstract music, much more ambient than what I usually do,” says Monder. Thomas Conrad in Jazz Times praised Monder for sustaining “a single ethereal domain of sonorities”.
A guitarist's guitarist, Monder is also a master of texture and unusual voicings, creating what one reviewer has called "detailed sonic landscapes of mystery and power".
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