Ben Goldberg • Todd Sickafoose • Scott Amendola

BEN GOLDBERG • TODD SICKAFOOSE • SCOTT AMENDOLA

The clarinet trio is an unusual instrumentation for most. For Ben Goldberg? “It’s been the most common trio in my life,” says the master clarinetist.

With Here To There, three longtime musical comrades join forces in a together-again-for-the-first time collective for the newest iteration of clarinet trio excellence. Goldberg, explorative double bassist Todd Sickafoose and inventive drummer Scott Amendola perform eleven originals by all three members, channeling the sound of deep friendship, creative freedom and time-earned ease.

“Plays Monk,” a previous group Ben and Scott had with bassist Devra Hoff,” had a nice run, and Scott and I were thinking it would be fun to play in a trio some more,” said Goldberg, in a three-way Zoom video interview. “So we recruited Todd. We’ve all played together in different combinations over the last 30 years and are all friends. We’re also on similar wavelengths, musically.”

Amendola set up a series of concerts over two weekends in 2022, and the new trio pondered its musical approach. “We knew we didn’t exactly want to just keep playing Monk, but weren’t sure what else to do,” said Sickafoose. “So the idea appeared in the middle of one of our gigs. I feel like it was you, Ben, who said we should just play the bridges.”

“And that somehow turned into the idea of writing some tunes that were all based on the bridge of a Thelonious Monk song,” Goldberg continued. “That’s where we opened the door to this thing that feels like a real group sound, like our own sound.”