Close your eyes. Good. Now imagine this: You are sitting on a red velvet couch, your girlfriend is next to you, grasping your right hand with one of hers while at the same time sipping an apple martini. You reach across the candle-lit table to set down your scotch and just lay back, and begin to notice the sweet melodies and harmonies coming from the jazz musicians in the back of the room. The guitar sounds so smooth, so tasty. You light up your cigar and carefully focus on how amazing the guitar player’s improvised and composed lines sound. Hints of Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Bud Powell, & Charlie Parker emanate from his archtop. “Who is this amazing jazz guitar player,” you wonder.

His name is Roni Ben-Hur.

“What I aim for is to always keep an open mind and spirit on the bandstand and at all times express my emotions through my music.”

As a teenager, Roni Ben-Hur fell in love with jazz while still in his native land of Israel. Born to a family who emigrated from Tunisia, he grew up with the exotic, seductive rhythms of North Africa and the soulfulness of Sephardic Jewish melodies. Interestingly, this unusual background made for a very natural transition to jazz. Roni recalls, “though no one in my family was a professional musician, music was a central part of our life. Every celebration and holiday included singing and dancing, mostly with the accompaniment of hand drums. Music elevated us in times of happiness as well as hardship. This experience taught me the strength and power of music.”

An avid educator, Ben-Hur’s teaching career began in Israel in 1981. Since then, he has established three successful, ongoing high school jazz music programs at the Professional Performing Arts School, The Coalition School for Social Change, and Landmark High School, all in New York City. His inspirational demeanor and communication skills create a strong personal bond with his students, prompting actress and social / educational activist, Bette Midler, to ask Ben-Hur to model a music education program for other public schools in New York City. He has directed the jazz program at Kaufman Center’s Lucy Moses School since 1992.

As a determined and impressionable young musician, literally ‘fresh off the boat’ in 1985, Roni absorbed a lifetime of real-deal experience hanging out at Barry Harris’ Jazz Cultural Theater, the epicenter of hip in Manhattan during the 1980s. There he met a veritable Who’s Who in Jazz, each of whom imparted enriching tales about living the jazz life to the aspiring guitarist. “People like Walter Booker, Barry Harris, Chris Anderson and Leroy Williams offered me a window to this music,” says the guitarist who has been a key player in Harris’ band since 1991. “They were my most important mentors. What attracted me to them is the way they always seem to go right to the essence of what music is about. They made me realize how it is never just about chords and scales and musical theory. It’s about the story you tell. That’s a key lesson for a young musician to learn.”

Ben-Hur has performed and recorded as a sideman of choice with such jazz luminaries as Barry Harris, Chris Anderson, Rufus Reid, Walter Booker, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, Cecil Payne, Charles McPherson, Etta Jones, Marcus Belgrave and Bill Doggett. He has led his own band at innumerable gigs around New York, including Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Sweet Rhythm, Birdland, The Blue Note, Smoke and Lenox Lounge, and has performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, The JVC Jazz Festival, Belleayre Festival, Mellon Jazz Festival, Princeton Jazz Festival, Saratoga Jazz Festival, the Child of the Sun Festival and more. Ben-Hur also plays guitar on his wife’s newest record, Amy London: When I Look in Your Eyes which is slated for tandem release with Keepin’ it Open in May on Motema Music.

Listen to some clips here:

Check out his jazz guitar book too:

Official Roni Ben-Hur Website
Roni on Myspace

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