RONI BEN-HUR

GUITAR

Jazz guitarist Roni Ben-Hur is renowned for his golden tone and improvisational brilliance; he plays straight-ahead jazz, Brazilian music, and other Latin styles with equal finesse. His talents were honed by his work with masters in each of those fields, notably bebop pianist Barry Harris, longtime Count Basie saxophonist and flutist Frank Wess, Brazilian jazz singer Leny Andrade, and composer-singer Marcos Valle. The eminent Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins called him “a limber and inventive guitarist” who “keeps the flame alive and pure, burning in every note.” The New York Times praised Roni’s “crisp, fluid style”; Time Out New York proclaimed him “a formidable and consummately lyrical guitarist.”

Born in Israel in 1962 but a longtime U.S. citizen based in the New York area, Roni has recorded nearly 20 albums as leader or co-leader. Roni’s 2023 album Love Letters (Mighty Quinn Records), featuring the renowned Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, shows off his broad scope with a repertoire that includes bebop, bossa nova, standards, and his own originals. In Hot House, George Kanzler called Love Letters “a sonically sensuous, lyrically rich quartet album.” Joseph Lang of Jersey Jazz Magazine proclaimed it “a musical love letter to those who love jazz…. Roni Ben-Hur is such a fluid player that you feel like you could keep on listening for hours.”

Aside from his hectic touring schedule, Roni is an exceptionally dedicated jazz educator who has directed international music camps for over two decades. He founded the jazz program at New York’s Kaufman Music Center in 1994 while establishing others in New York City high schools. Roni has also presented individual workshops for students of all ages in the U.S. and Europe.

Originally from Tunisia, Roni’s family relocated to Dimona, Israel, where he was born into a large working-class family. In his teens he became enraptured by the recordings of Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Joe Pass, Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell. He also came to love the classical Spanish repertoire via one of its performing titans, guitarist Andrés Segovia, in whose work he heard a Moorish sound that resonated with his family’s North African roots. Roni began performing in wedding bands and in Tel Aviv clubs. After moving to New York City in 1985, he discovered the music of guitarist-composer Baden Powell, a bossa nova giant; thus began Roni’s love affair with Brazilian music.

“With my family coming from Tunisia, I felt equally at home with Brazilian and jazz rhythms because both originated in Africa. And when you consider the jazz-standard repertoire, the melodic content of songs by composers like Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin is very much rooted in Jewish music. And while North Africa has that link to Moorish sounds, those sounds are also at the root of Brazilian music. So I’ve always gravitated toward those beautiful minor-key songs and romantic melodies of the standards songbook, as well as the deep rhythms in both bebop and Brazilian music.”

When Roni came onto the New York jazz scene, he was fortunate to be taken under the wing of the Grammy-winning pianist Barry Harris, a disciple of Thelonious Monk and an eventual NEA Jazz Master. As an up-and-coming guitarist, Roni played in Harris’s band, where he absorbed musical and life lessons. “I was so lucky to learn at the elbow of Barry Harris,” he says. “The young players at that time and all the listeners, too, we just loved his feel. You would get a shot of energy coming through you from that authentic, uplifting swing that Barry always had in his fingers.”

In addition to leading his own bands, Roni has performed not only with the heroes and peers mentioned above but with Cecil Payne, Etta Jones, Marcus Belgrave, Charles McPherson, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Slide Hampton, Chris Anderson, Earl May, Teri Thornton and Bill Doggett. Roni has also played with pianist Roger Kellaway, whose 2024 release Live at Mezzrow features Roni.

As an educator, Roni has developed an international reach. The founding director of the jazz program at the Lucy Moses School of the Kaufman Center, he has taught a multitude of jazz enthusiasts in ensemble playing, improvisation and jazz guitar. Roni has also led jazz camps from Vermont and New York to Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Turkey, where he teaches workshops in straight-ahead, Latin and Brazilian jazz. These days he holds his Roni Ben-Hur Jazz Camp in Vermont each summer, in France every spring and fall and in Havana in the winter. The camps held near the village of Uzès in the South of France double as culinary and travel experiences; they include cooking classes and excursions to nearby sites.

“The people who come to my jazz camps are serious amateurs,” he says. “I give them the opportunity to learn a lot—repertoire, rhythms, techniques—but I also give them the space to enjoy themselves in a relaxed, vacation-friendly environment, with a lot of hanging out and jam sessions. The goal is to have fun learning, so that the experience is rewarding and refreshing. Most of the students are accomplished professionals beyond music. I’m a believer in practice, of course, but I aim to teach students at their own pace. And I want the jazz-camp participants to learn music through a love of the experience, not only through theory. As Barry did, I emphasize aural learning so that students can absorb music through their ears and fingers. Assimilating it that way means the lessons really stick with you.”

His instructional releases include the DVD Chordability (Motéma, 2011), which offers 20 lessons in chord voicings and jazz harmony for intermediate and advanced guitarists. Roni also translated “the Barry Harris method” to guitar with the publication Talk Jazz: Guitar (Bohobza Music 2003), which has appeared in English and Japanese editions.