HAGAR BEN ARI
Anchoring Late-Night TV’s Most Eccentric Band By Vicky Warwick |
“DO
you have champagne?” Hagar Ben Ari asks the bartender in the CBS Studio green room. The bartender looks at us both, and with a slow smile emerging from one corner of his mouth, he raises his eyebrows and replies, “Hagar, we always have champagne!” Life as the bass player in the house band of a major-network late night talk show seems to be as glamorous as you would hope. I look past a display of multiple Emmy Awards toward platters of gourmet nibbles for the green room’s influx of A-list actors and musical guests. Makeup artists are on call with every shade of lipstick — including the one to match Hagar’s new, pink sunglasses — and of course, there’s the well-stocked bar. Hagar has earned her cushy post in the house band of The Late Late Show With James Corden, working for many years as a professional musician in her native Israel before touring internationally and eventually immigrating to America. A home environment full of music due to her guitar-teaching father led Ben Ari into playing instruments from a young age. She recalls, “I would watch my dad’s students and think they were like rock stars; I would think, I wanna be a rock star!” She began
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Photograph by Shervin Lainez
on classical guitar, but switched to bass at age 14 when she needed to play an electric instrument to audition for a place in the jazz department at the Thelma Yelin School — think Israel’s answer to New York City’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Performing Arts, made famous in Fame. Hagar found herself playing all of Tel Aviv’s best venues by the time she was 16, and by 19 she was touring internationally with the artist Noa. Her hunger to progress further led her to move from Tel Aviv to New York City, where she continued to provide her solid, funk-inspired bass lines for artists such as Daniel Merriweather, Pimps Of Joytime, Cyril Neville, Salif Keita, and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Further opportunity knocked when she was put in touch with Reggie Watts, who was looking for musicians to join him on his new gig: bandleader for The Late Late Show. In true music-industry nature, it meant she had only four days to relocate to the opposite coast and settle into her new job and home in Los Angeles. As far as late-night bands go, this one operates in a place fairly left of center. Reggie Watts is an eccentric musician, beatboxer, and comedian. His explanation of their bizarre band name, Karen, might give you a sense of his spirit: “I had an idea of starting
BASS MAGAZINE ; ISSUE 6 ; bassmagazine.com
