ABOUT
Alec Goldfarb is a Downbeat Magazine award winning guitarist, composer, and Hindustani classical musician based in Brooklyn. Active in the NYC jazz and new 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, and more. He has premiered works by Matthew Schlomowitz, Kate Soper, Taylor Brook, Austin Wulliman, Joshua Mastel, Alyssa Regent, Vicente Hansen Atria, and played on the Deutscher Jazz Preis Award winning album "Orlando Furioso" in 2023 as well as the Deutscher Jazz Preis Award nominated "Phantom Islands" in 2024.
​Lauded for his versatility as a composer and performer, Alec can be found performing a concerto for Gamelan and guitar (summer 2024 with Dion Nataraja and the Javanese experimental Sandikala Ensemble), a concerto for for two guitars alongside Anthony Braxton’s Creative Music Orchestra , accompanying folk artists (Pablo O’Connell), creating new works based on Gnawa traditions with Gnawa masters (maalems) in Morocco, and as a first call for both jazz and chamber music in New York City. He has become increasingly in-demand for works with a speculative historical component- Keir GoGwilt’s Zarabanda Variations, Vicente Hansen’s Orlando Furioso, the Vex Collection, Mat Muntz’s Phantom Islands, and Phillip Golub’s Abiding Memory. He is deeply interested in tuning, particularly in Just Intonation.
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, Chris Tordini, Kim Cass, Erin Rogers, and Marina Kifferstein. 2023 saw tours in Southeast Asia, Europe, North Africa, and North America. 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.
