Benji Kaplan is one of the most exciting new vibrating forces on the contemporary Brazilian/Jazz and Chamber Music scene, today. His music video, "A Gente se Manifesta" was featured in the March 2017 edition of Billboard Brazil as well as having been officially selected for the TMC London film Festival and Girona Film Festival in Spain . Benji has been heralded by the most recognized composer post-Jobim from Brazil, Guinga, as "the greatest composer of Brazilian music, coming from the United States, that I have heard...He is a genius." In August 2016, Benji played a sold out concert for the famed Brasil Summerfest at Nublu 161’s grand opening night in NYC, where he shared the bill with some of Brazil’s most beloved contemporary songwriters including, Kassin, Ze Renato and Vinicius Cantuaria. He has traveled North to South of Brazil and has performed at the Central University of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, The legendary, Beco das Garrafas, in Rio de Janeiro, and given workshops at the Musical Center of Olinda, Brazil (Centro educação musical de Olinda) among many others. Performances at NYC clubs include: Cornelia Street Cafe, Nublu, Dizzy's Club, Zinc Bar, and Smalls. He has shared the stage/performed and studied with a wide variety of Jazz greats including: Junior Mance, Bernard Purdie (Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin) Benny Powell,(Count Basie), Chico Hamilton, Barry Harris, and Rodney Jones (Dizzy Gillespie) Benji's 2016 Album, Uai So, featuring himself on guitar and vocals, has been highly acclaimed for its lyrical compositions, lush harmonies, and unorthodox arrangements for winds, strings and brass.) With his now (4th) and latest album to date, “Chorando Sete Cores” (Crying 7 Colors) Benji embarks on 13 new compositional adventures, all instrumental. Tugged by the strings of his guitar, woodwinds and brass travel with him through Brazil's vast musical landscape, which include choros, lullabies, sambas, maracatus and other rhythms and styles. In addition to Benji on guitar, the ensemble comprises of Remy Leboeuf on Clarinets, Anne Drummond on Flutes and David Byrd Marrow on the French Horn. A testament to the ensemble's skilled and heartfelt musicianship and Benji's deft arrangements, the impression is that of an effortless flow - a deceptively simple embrace of Benji's intricate harmonies and often playful, sonic juxtapositions that have come to characterize his unique compositional style. “Sophisticated yet sensuous” - Jazz Weekly “…what the whimsical Dr. Seuss might’ve composed, had he been a musician and ridiculously talented at it…the degree of intelligence sunk into the deepest corners of every beat and measure of this treasure tells us that no matter what his pursuit might otherwise have been, the result would’ve been simultaneously unearthly while uniquely terran” - Mark S. Tucker/ Veritas Vampirus Benji Kaplan, whose performance infectiously realizes both great virtuosity and credible emotion and lyricism to the generously proportioned melody… this is actually a bigger deal than could ever be imagined or expressed in a five-hundred-or-so (word) review” - World Music Report “Benji Kaplan's "Uai Sô" is so unexpected that it cannot be pigeonholed. The music flows beautifully and oscillates between Brazilian song and new classical so rapidly as to truly meld together as one unprecedented newness...Honestly this one is so well fabricated and substantial as to get me reeling with surprise and delight...This fellow is something else! Something else!” - Gapplegate Music Review