Born in Los Angeles, Jason began playing guitar when they were five. By the 6th grade, they fell in love with jazz. Jason received the Jerry Margolis Jazz Award their senior year of high school. Along with this award, Jason also received a Semi-Finalist Award in The Music Center’s Spotlight Jazz Instrumental Competition and Honorable Mention for the Young Arts Award. They then went on to spend two years studying at Eastman School of Music where Jason developed both as a player and as a composer, exploring jazz and classical music. They completed their Bachelor’s degree in jazz guitar at California Institute of the Arts. Jason has played at various concerts, events, fundraisers, cocktail parties, clubs, and conservatories around Los Angeles, Rochester, Germany and Italy. They also participated in LA Jazz Society’s Bill Green Mentorship Program, and attended various summer jazz programs across the U.S. They recently spent some years in Berlin where they focused on exploring a singer-songrwriter project reveloving around alternate guitar tunings. Along with this, they compose, arrange, and perform with a wide variety of ensembles. Some notable musicians they have performed with include: Friede Merz, Julius Windisch, Darek Oles, Chris Speed, Joe LaBabera, Avishai Cohen [trumpet], Theo Bleckmann, Harish Raghavan, and Shane Endsley. Jason was mentored by Larry Koonse, Aashish Khan, Andrew Synoweic, Ben Monder, Matt Stevens, and Bennie Maupin.
Jason currently resides in Zürich where they are doing a Masters in Transdisciplinary Studies at ZHdK, seeking to bridge their music practice with socio-political research on Germany’s so called ‘war against anti-semtiism’.
For more on Jason, here’s a Voyage LA Interview from June 2020:
http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-jason-oberman-jason-oberman-santa-clarita/