The Grammy-nominated saxophonist and Kneebody co-founder joins us for episode 300 to discuss his new album BaRcoDe, a project built around four of the most inventive mallet players working today.

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Today we put The Tonearm's needle on Ben Wendel.

Ben is a Grammy-nominated saxophonist, composer, and co-founder of Kneebody, with a discography that covers post-bop, chamber jazz, and electronic music. He's worked with Bill Frisell, Tigran Hamasyan, Terence Blanchard, and yes, Prince.

His new album BaRcoDe just dropped on Edition Records. It's built around a concept that's hard to pull off: four of the most in-demand vibraphonists working today—Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, Patricia Brennan, and Juan Diego Villalobos—surrounding one saxophonist. The group developed the music across two residencies at The Jazz Gallery in New York City, and the result is something that sits between chamber music and jazz improvisation, with electronics running through all of it.

Ben's here to walk us through how this project came together and what it took to write for an ensemble like this.

(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Ben Wendel's album BaRcoDe)

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00:00 Introduction
01:18 The genesis of BaRcoDe: a Jazz Gallery commission and the mallet generation
03:04 Sō Percussion, Munich, and putting improvisers into a new kind of band
04:10 Choosing the four players: the Avengers of mallet
05:48 Writing music specifically for those voices
06:15 The BaRcoDe title: bars, codes, and Patricia Brennan's suggestion
07:55 Sessions and preparation: complex charts and a full day at the Jazz Gallery
09:54 Demos and the composition process: Logic, Sibelius, and deliberately silly sounds
10:50 Antônio Carlos Jobim's "Olha Maria" and the case for including one arrangement
15:03 The hypnotic, trance-like effect of the ensemble live
16:00 Stage configuration at the Jazz Gallery: heaven in a semicircle
16:45 What makes a sturdy composition: Jobim, Bach, and the art of translation
17:35 The Los Angeles scene and what it actually taught him
20:15 Terrace Martin, Leimert Park, Billy Higgins, and the World Stage
21:10 Eastman, CalArts, and the classical/improvising divide
23:40 How that divide has changed over the past two decades
25:58 On teaching: looking in the mirror
28:29 What bad teachers actually teach you
29:08 The Village Vanguard: history, spirits, and Billy Higgins revisited
31:22 Booking a year out and an upcoming week with John Patitucci
32:31 Steve Wood and Nate Wood: post-production in safe hands
38:15 Grammy nominations and releasing art into the world
39:49 Edition Records and a catalog that has a sound
43:54 The saxophone Avengers: a hypothetical
45:35 The abundance of great players working today
46:38 The internet, Google alerts, and the strangeness of audience
47:18 What's next: expanding the discography

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Visit Ben Wendel at https://benwendel.com
and follow him on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/benwendel
Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/benwendelmusician
and YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/user/benwendel

Purchase Ben Wendel's 'BaRcoDe' from Edition Records → https://editionrecords.com/releases/barcode
Bandcamp → https://benwendel.bandcamp.com/album/barcode
or Qobuz → https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/album/barcode-ben-wendel/pdxeeae1gvey1
and listen on your streaming platform of choice → https://orcd.co/xmpdlqr

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