In the Spirit of Trane, A Voice All His Own: An Interview with Ben Solomon

By / Featured, Interviews / , , , , ,

Introduction

When it comes to a modern player who has been developing his own sound while also capturing so much of the essence of Trane, I think of Ben Solomon. Since seeing videos of Ben playing through his various etude books, I reached out to Ben who was nice enough to sit down with me and share his story. For those of you who are not familiar with Ben, here is a short bio to get you up to speed.

Biography

  • Ben Solomon’s musical upbringing began when he started learning saxophone at the age of 10 and was exposed to the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
  • Ben moved to New York to study music in 2012, and left school to go on tour with Wallace Roney’s band. Playing in this band from 2012 to 2017 had a formative effect on Ben’s playing.
  • Roney was a mentor and a positive influence on Ben’s musical growth. As Roney’s sideman, Solomon also had the great opportunity to play alongside master musicians such as Buster Williams, Lenny White, Patrice Rushen, Gary Bartz, Ron Carter, Chick Corea and many others.
  • In 2017 Solomon went back to school to study music composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston. While living in Boston, Ben played regularly at Wally’s jazz club and continued touring.
  • In 2020 Solomon published “Chromatophores”, a book of modulation etudes for saxophone which was followed by a second book of etudes in 2023.
  • In 2024 Solomon released his first quartet album “Echolocation”.
  • In 2025 Solomon recorded on Aaron Park’s upcoming album “By All Means!!” released November 2025 on Blue Note Records.

Interview

ZS: Who or what introduced you to the saxophone?

BS: There were several things but when I was ten, I saw a documentary called Calle 54. In that documentary, it features performances from all of these great musicians from the afro-cuban tradition. I remember seeing Paquito Riviera start on clarinet and then the camera cuts away and he is on alto sax sounding amazing. In fifth grade, they made you pick an instrument so from that documentary I knew I wanted to play the saxophone. My dad really enjoyed jazz and was always playing albums so when I told him I wanted to play saxophone he showed me Boss Tenors, My Favorite Things, and Sonny Side Up which got me very excited about the saxophone. I started on alto saxophone in middle school but was actually supposed to start on clarinet. The deal was if I took private lessons then I could start on alto saxophone. I took some private lessons before I started in the band program. There was a teacher I took a couple lessons from at a music store and she helped me learn the basics. Shortly after, since I was renting an alto saxophone my parents thought it was a good idea to buy me an alto saxophone so we went to PM Woodwinds. They had a student vito alto saxophone and the guy who assisted us also taught saxophone and his name was Dmitri Lemay. I started taking lessons from Dmitri from 5th to 8th grade and he was amazing.

When I was thirteen, Dmitri told my parents that I needed a new teacher since I was progressing very quickly so he sent me to his teacher which was Greg Fishman. When I started studying with Greg, he had so much information and concepts we started working on right away and at this time I switched from alto to tenor saxophone. In eighth grade to early high school I remember watching various documentaries about John Coltrane and reading several biographies. There is a Jazz Casual DVD with Coltrane and I would watch this DVD over and over. Although I wasn’t thinking about a career in music, I just wanted to be like John Coltrane. Right after high school, I didn’t go straight to music school. I went to a Sara Lawrence College because at the time I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life but loved music. They had an art history program where I had an arts scholarship to study art history and that gave me some direction with Sara Lawrence also being close to New York City. Sara Lawrence had a music program and I was playing in various ensembles but it wasn’t part of my major. I took different classes such as architecture, african american history, and other classes but I spent a lot of time going to the city and playing in jam sessions at Fat Cat; where I made friends and met Antoine Roney who is Wallace’s Roney’s brother and Wallace Roney Jr who is Wallace’s son.

Wallace Roney Jr invited me to play at a gig opening up for Wallace Roney’s band. I was only at Sara Lawerence for about a year. I played this gig with Wallace Roney Jr. and then after the gig Wallace senior said do you want to sit in with my band. I remember I played “Stella By Starlight” and a blues. After that, Wallace gave me his phone number and we started talking on the phone and he would give me advice. I started going to rehearsals with Wallace’s band and Antonie Roney was in the band but at that time wanted to leave and do his own thing. The timing worked out where Antonie wanted to leave and Wallace said come play with my band.This wasn’t planned but just one of those really lucky things and I played with Wallace’s band for several years.

While playing with Wallace’s group, I was nineteen living in NYC with some friends for about a year and a half. I couldn’t live in NYC at that time as it was way too much for me and ended up moving back to Chicago. I ended up moving back in with my parents and this was a low point as coming from NYC, I thought I failed. For many years, I was still playing in Wallace’s band cause he would have tours and just send me a plane ticket but that wasn’t all the time. I started working at a movie theater near my parents house so there were a lot of ups and downs. The issue is this didn’t really add up to a life. I started taking piano lessons and got really into harmony and obsessed with Maurice Revel’s and Claude Debussy music and piano playing. I went down a rabbit hole with French piano music as I think it has a lot in common with jazz pianists of modern day such as Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and even Duke Ellington. You can hear a lot of those chord colors and harmonic moves in their playing. I am not saying they came from this influence but there are a lot of connections there. Gradually, I started to think about going back to music school and studying composition. I spoke to a teacher Ed Tomassi at Berklee and he helped me get into the Berklee system when I was 24 years old. What’s crazy is right before going to Berklee I played a gig with Chick Corea and we played two nights for his birthday celebration which was one of the most incredible music moments I ever had and then shortly after I am taking harmony 1 which was a very humbling experience.

Going to Berklee was one of the best things I ever did because it forced me to learn those fundamental things I skipped over earlier in my life. My major was professional music where I took composition classes, played in the ensembles, and took electronic music classes so I could blend together the classes I wanted to take. My musical interests varied so I had a great time at Berklee. I graduated Berklee May 2020 and I was thinking of moving back to NYC but it didn’t happen that way. In March of 2020, Wallace Roney died very suddenly which was a shock and something I never thought would have happened. He was such a great mentor to me and a friend. I felt very confused during that time and when I graduated I was in Boston with no work. So I did what everyone else did and applied for unemployment and I was sitting around my apartment with other musicians and started writing some etudes for myself. I finished studying all these harmony classes at Berklee and with all this time I started recording myself working on these exercises and then got the idea I will write an etude book which gave me focus when there was no structure and no work. I just worked on my etude book and actually was practicing these etudes on soprano and took a short break from tenor. Creatively, I felt this was productive for me and later that summer the unemployment check came through and I decided to move to NYC. I had a lot of friends that were subletting so it was easy to find a place and that is how I got back to NYC but it was a really crazy time.

ZS: Who are your saxophone influences and have they changed over time?

BS: In high school, I primarily listened to John Coltrane, Joe Henderson, and Sonny Stitt which were my foundational influences during that time. Coltrane is still one of my biggest influences as emotionally I really connect to his music. At eleven, I would listen to Interstellar Space or a Love Supreme as it’s so direct and straight forward in a way. Wayne Shorter was another influence and as I get older I appreciate his music and understand it better. I remember Wallace introducing me a lot to Wayne Shorter and certain solo’s Wayne took. I had a period when I was really into Freddie Hubbard and started playing cornet and was trying to figure out what Freddie was playing. I couldn’t play like Freddie but figuring out how the fingerings worked helped me better understand what Wallace was doing. I think it’s good for saxophone players to know at least how a trumpet works because it helps you play better in tune with trumpet players. I also really enjoyed listening to Donald Byrd and Wilbur Harden. Currently, my listening habits have been all over the place but this is good as I am always looking to expand my musical tastes.

ZS: As you progressed on the saxophone and developed your own sound, what was your process and when did you realize that you found your voice?

BS: I don’t feel that I am in my mature phase. I feel that I have had a very long musical adolescence. I went through all these phases with piano, to attend Berklee, and then even through writing my etudes. Right after I finished my first etude, I immediately started working on my second book of etudes. I would say working on these etudes has had a big impact on my own sound as this forced me to think about what I think is interesting and what the saxophone mechanically is efficient at and what are ways to texturize harmony on this instrument. This process helped me get closer to finding my own voice. Recently, I have been practicing flute, taking flute lessons, listening to flute players, and even taking a class on flute repair which is my next phase of education. Learning about flute is changing the way I am approaching the saxophone.

ZS: What is your approach to teaching and practicing and do you prefer one over the other and why?

BS: I like teaching as it forces me to think about trying to explain things that I already suspect or am aware of. Sometimes when I start explaining a concept to a student it helps me better understand it as before it was more an instinct or feeling.

ZS: What was the inspiration for Chromatophores, Chromatophores Book II, and Duet Etudes?

BS: My last semester at Berklee I took a class with a teacher named Alla Elana Cohen called The Art of Modulation. She would start class by pulling up a score of Brahms or Chopin and read the score while adding commentary about the harmony. Then, she would write on the board how Brahms went from this key to this key and how this chord led to this chord and all the steps and the different types of modulations. This fascinated me because the moment of modulation is exciting and creates a certain feeling in music which is beautiful if done well. Every week in that class we would write a different modulation. For example, write a choral that goes from E Major to Db Major and you might go through four different keys before you get to Db Major.

I always loved harp music as it has a certain sound and my sister is actually a harpist. I know that Coltrane liked Carlos Salzato who is a harp innovator so I was listening to some harp music which has a lot of arpeggios and sounds great on the saxophone. I found that many classical etudes for saxophone are in one key and don’t modulate to many keys. My idea with the modulation etudes was to write an etude that I would enjoy practicing as it would smoothly modulate through all these keys and it would explore the various fingerings.

ZS: Sideman vs. bandleader — what are the key differences in how you approach each, and do you have a preference?

BS: Being a sideman is more enjoyable, especially when working with great musicians. There’s real pleasure in finding your place within someone else’s music and serving their artistic vision. I find it easier conceptually being a sideman whereas being a leader you have to know what you want, communicate it clearly, and troubleshoot when the music doesn’t match your vision. It’s harder, and while it can be rewarding, I’ve come to recognize that my personality is simply better suited being a sideman.

ZS: If you hadn’t pursued music full-time, what other career might you have followed?

BS: My favorite class in high school was geo science. I found geology to be one of the most interesting subjects. I was interested in art history too since with geology I didn’t have very good math skills which would make me a terrible geologist. Just learning about the moon, oceans, dinosaurs, etc and how they function is fascinating to me.

ZS: What projects are you currently working on?

BS: Honestly, I have been studying flute, flute music, and learning how to work on flutes. I recently took a jewelry class on how to solder metal because that is part of making and fixing a flute. I have been writing music for a new album but I don’t think that album will be recorded for quite some time but I have been putting together a book of ideas.

ZS: What are your thoughts on equipment? How important is equipment and how has your setup evolved?

BS: Equipment is quite important for the quality of sound you want to achieve. For instance, in high school, I simply bought what my teacher recommended without much thought. Later in my journey, there was a trend to play mouthpieces with large tip openings but I read in various biographies that Trane actually played a 5* or 6 tip opening so I got in my head I can do that. Eventually, I played a metal Otto Link 5* and it did get me a very focused and bright sound but I still had to shape that sound. You have to be a good player to make that setup work or you may find that setup stuffy and resistant. The hardest thing is finding out what works with your body. I did try mouthpieces with larger chambers and tip openings which I liked how big my sound could be but I got tired. Currently, I am playing a vintage metal Otto Link 6* and I think finding the right tip opening and reed strength balance is more important than the mouthpiece brand.

Equipment

Tenor:

  • Saxophone: Relacquered Selmer Balanced action (BA) 1943
  • Ligature: Vintage metal Otto Link ligature
  • Reed: D’Addario Select Jazz 3s Filed
  • Mouthpiece: Original Florida no usa 6* (.95)
  • Case: Bam Cabine with safety belt
  • Neckstrap: stock black Conn neckstrap – super light and thin

Connect: