Ty Citerman

Ty Citerman is a Brooklyn, NY-based guitarist, composer and bandleader who writes, performs and teaches music across the spectrum of jazz, rock and contemporary classical. He is a founding member of the irreverent chamber jazz quartet Gutbucket; he leads the radical Jewish ensemble Bop Kabbalah; and he writes chamber music that’s been performed by JACK Quartet, Anti-Social Music, Sara Schoenbeck and Bearthoven. He has played with the American Composers Orchestra, John Zorn, Ethel, Glenn Branca, Kaoru Watanabe, Frank London, Rhys Chatham, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Brian Chase and many others. His music appears on Cuneiform Records, Tzadik Records, Cantaloupe Music, Enja, Knitting Factory, NRW, Gut Records and Infrequent Seams. He has been featured on National Public Radio (“Soundcheck” and “World Café Live”), Radio Free Europe and numerous college and independent stations across the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Europe. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the London Jazz Festival, Paris Jazz Festival, Belgrade Jazz Festival, Jazz a Vienne, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Earshot Jazz Festival, Jazz Saalfelden, Worldport Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and Warsaw Summer Jazz Days.

Guitar Player called Ty’s music for Gutbucket “kinetic punk jazz opuses” that “reveal an explosive concoction containing lethal doses of Ornette Coleman, King Crimson, John Zorn, Black Sabbath, Stravinsky, and Fugazi.” He has also been featured in Downbeat, The Guardian, Tablet, The New York City Jazz Record, Tikkun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Sydney Morning Herald and JazzTimes, which called the album “Bop Kabbalah” (2014) “…one of the year’s most arresting recordings…”

Ty is the proud recipient of a 2018 Brooklyn Arts Council grant to support the creation, performance and recording of a suite of original Yiddish labor songs for cutting-edge vocalists Judith Berkson and Sara Serpa. This music is featured on his recent 2020 Infrequent Seams release “Bop Kabbalah+Voices: When You Speak of Times to Come (Ven Du Redst Fun Naye Tsaytn),” which Salt Peanuts called “inspiring and moving, and beautifully arranged and delivered.”