Miri Ben-Ari doesn’t remember how it felt the first time she picked up a violin. It’s understandable: The 32-year-old Tel Aviv native has been at it since age 5.
Besides, the woman dubbed “the hip-hop violinist” by Wyclef Jean, one of the most influential hip-hop artists in the business, has plenty of other unforgettable moments in her musical history: playing a packed Carnegie Hall alongside Jean in 2001, winning a Grammy for songwriting with Kanye West in 2005, and visiting the White House in March for a Women’s History Month celebration, as a special guest of Michelle Obama’s.
“I’ve been very lucky with meeting people who wanted to help my career, and I’m very grateful,” says the musician on a break from rehearsals in New York, where she lives. Ben-Ari will perform at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto on Oct. 22.
Raised on a steady diet of classical music, Ben-Ari showed signs of unusual talent early on; at age 12, she was presented with a violin by the acclaimed American violinist Isaac Stern. While serving in the Israeli military, she was chosen to play in the army’s string quartet. It was around the same time, after hearing an album by saxophone great Charlie Parker, that Ben-Ami fell in love with jazz.
“When I got out of the army, I decided I would just come to the U.S. and pursue my dreams with the violin,” recalls Ben-Ari, who settled in New York in 1993. She enrolled in the Mannes College classical music conservatory but was expelled after her first year because of poor attendance — she was missing class because she was playing gigs to make rent.
“I was improvising, and eventually I started going to open mikes with hip-hop and R&B at them. I think my music just naturally absorbed some of that, gravitated toward it. I didn’t know I was doing anything all that different.”
In 2001, one of her performances caught the eye of rapper and mogul Jay-Z, who invited her to play at a New York hip-hop station’s annual summer concert; her performance received a standing ovation. Soon after, Jean invited her to play Carnegie Hall with him during a historic performance; it was the storied venue’s first hip-hop headliner.
Since then, Ben-Ari has been a fixture of the hip-hop world — a classically trained musician who lends grace and technical composition to some of her counterparts’ grittier work. She’s collaborated with Alicia Keys, Wynton Marsalis, John Legend, Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu and many others. (The next artist she’d love to work with? “Madonna,” she says without hesitation.)
But Ben-Ari makes sure to leave time for her other passion: humanitarian work. In 2006, she founded Gedenk, an organization that seeks to promote youth education about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. The cause is extremely personal: Her father lost almost his entire family in the Holocaust.
“It’s something I do from the heart, and I’m very passionate about it,” says Ben-Ari, the group’s CEO. “My interest in this whole subject started by listening to [my family’s] stories when I was doing a family tree at 12 years old. It stayed with me, and I needed to do something about it.”
She cites a study that suggests that, in the U.S., more than half of graduating high school students don’t know what the Holocaust is. “This is a real monster,” she says. “How are you going to prevent this in the future or plan for the future if you don’t know your past?”
As for her musical future, Ben-Ari is working on a new album, her sixth, due out next year. And she’s constantly seeking out ways to combine her passion for social justice with her art. In September, she spoke at the United Nations during an awards ceremony honoring heads of state, celebrities and individuals working to advance women’s and children’s health. After her trip to the West Coast this month, she’ll perform at a Susan G. Komen event at the Kennedy Center.
“I’m doing what I love to do,” she says. “These events, like being honored at the White House … it’s incredibly humbling. And I’m having so much fun.”
Miri Ben-Ari performs at 8:30 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Oshman Family JCC, 3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto. $40-$75. (650) 223-8692 or [email protected].