May 7th, 2023 5pm Stage 1
Ben Rubie started playing violin at age 5, studying at the highly regarded Opus 118 program in Harlem started by Roberta Guaspari. He currently attends New York University on the Steinhardt scholarship for jazz violin. At the end of the 2018/19 school year he played in an advanced school ensemble performance at Merkin Hall alongside jazz violinist Sara Caswell.
He has been a member of the classical Inter School Orchestra (ISO) since he was 11. As well as studying and playing traditional classical repertoire, Ben also currently studies jazz with Ben Sutin, a rising jazz violinist and former student of the famed jazz violinist John Blake.
Ben is among a select group of students who has been invited to play the Litchfield International Jazz Festival in Connecticut after the jazz camp ended. His performance in 2019 as a soloist in an unusual venture of the ISO and the Mingus Dynasty in a combined performance arranged by trombonist Earl McIntyre, at a sold out concert in the Brooklyn campus of LIU won loud applause and praise from the audience and the musicians themselves. His great reward, he said, was hanging with pianist Theo Hill and the rest of the Mingus Dynasty musicians before the show.
In 2021 Ben subbed with the NYChillharmonic, a modern jazz fusion big band with all original music written and performed by musicians such as Adam Neely, Josh Bailey and Sara McDonald.
Ben recently opened for John Faddis and his group for a packed New Jersey Jazz in the Park Concert.
Anwar Marshall - Drums
Peter Rubie - Guitar
Sean Smith - Bass
Ben Rubie - Violin