Alec Goldfarb is a Downbeat Magazine award winning guitarist, composer, and Hindustani classical musician based in Brooklyn whose music is "full of ingenious juxtapositions and twists" (The Wire) with a penchant for "something like soliloquies" on the guitar (the Wall Street Journal). Active in the NYC jazz , new music, and Raga music communities, his work explores musical traits as historical vestiges of migrations, geographies, labor, and ritual.

 

An exponent of the Seniya-Maihar Gharana, Alec performs Hindustani classical music across the globe on the guitar using a novel synthesis of sarod and sitar technique. He served as inaugural composer in residence for Jonah Bokaer Choreography in 2018, premiering new works at the Joyce and across the East Coast. Other performances include Roulette Intermedium, Skanu Mezs, Darmstadt Ferienkurse, the Yellow Barn, the Kimmel Center, Frequency Festival, the Clark, Asia Society NYC, The Jazz Gallery and more. He has premiered works by Vicente Hansen Atria, Matthew Schlomowitz, Kate Soper, Taylor Brook, Austin Wulliman, Joshua Mastel, and played on the Deutscher Jazz Preis Award winning album "Orlando Furioso". Alec has performed in Southeast Asia, North Africa, Europe, South Asia, and the U.S.

 

Recent and upcoming projects include The Tree of Heaven (progressive Baroque music for strings and continuo), Dion Nataraja’s concerto for Gamelan and guitar with Javanese experimental Sandikala Ensemble, a solo guitar piece from Ashkan Behzadi, a concerto for for two guitars with Anthony Braxton’s Creative Music Orchestra, Keir GoGwilt’s Zarabanda Variations, Vicente Hansen’s Orlando Furioso, the Vex Collection, Mat Muntz’s Phantom Islands, and Phillip Golub’s Abiding Memory. On his acclaimed 2024 release Fire Lapping at the Creek: "In the varied sound worlds that composer Alec Goldfarb has explored, the sonic possibilities seem boundless" (NYC Jazz Record). 

 

He has performed with Anthony Braxton and the Creative Music Orchestra at Darmstadt, JACK Quartet, John Wetton (King Crimson), Mike Peters (The Alarm), Steve Lehman, Patrick Bartley Jr., Immanuel Wilkins, Mark Shim, Christian Lillinger, Pablo Held, Robert Landfermann, Lesley Mok, Adam O'Farrill, Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, Dan Weiss, Samir Chatterjee, Manik Khan, Utsav Lal, and Kim Cass. He holds a masters degree in Music Composition from CUNY Brooklyn College and B.A.’s from the University of Illinois in Music Composition/Theory and Philosophy, is an alumnus of the Kimmel Center Creative Music Program, and has taught at NYC Guitar School. He is the owner of Park Slope Guitar School in Brooklyn, NYC.