Arts Division
Professor, Music Department
Director, Creative Technologies
Faculty
Music Center
148
Wednesdays 11 AM - noon; Fridays 12:30-1:30 (Music Center 148) [+ check Google Calendar blc for zoom info]
Music Center
Composer Ben Leeds Carson's music has been featured at the Smithsonian, Mexico City's Foro Internacional de Música Nueva in Mexico City, Hamburg's Blurred Edges, REDCAT in LA, and at varied festivals in North America and Europe. Mark Swed described Reidemeister Move's performance of Carson’s Wonderment and Misgiving as “a kind of acoustic acupressure” (LA Times Critic’s Notebook, October 2018). Longer discussions of Carson’s work appear in iLand’s Cage Centennial issue (2012) and in the Open Space Magazine (2005). Carson has been an Artist/Researcher-in-Residence at Paris University VI & IRCAM (Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), where his collaborations (1999-2008) focused on the perception of complex rhythm and musical form. His music available on Sideband Records, Centaur Records, Albany Records, and other labels.
Ben Carson’s recent work concentrates on music drama, and includes music with actor Patty Gallagher for a telling of Homer's Iliad (Lisa Peterson & Denis O'Hare's An Iliad), with performances in Santa Cruz (May 2024) and Belfast (May 2025); and (with biologists Lincoln and Lee Taiz, and experience designer perre di carlo), a merging of a Star Trek teleplay by Gene Roddenberry with narratives of resistance to techno-fascism, challenges to the virtual/actual split, and epic Orphean hubris. John de Lancie (actor: Star Trek—Next Generation, Breaking Bad; acclaimed guest director of Atlanta Opera and San Antonio Opera) directed a production of Act I (Santa Cruz 2016); new workshops are planned for 2026.
Ben has earned numerous awards and grants for teaching excellence, including recent recognition of his justice-focused collaboration in the design of the nation's first for-credit orientation (UCSC Colleges 1A; awarded a 2023 innovation award from the Association for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education). The course is now taught yearly by 14 faculty, to all ~6,000 of UC Santa Cruz's entering students. He currently serves as the inaugural Director of Creative Technologies, a new undergraduate major in emerging arts technologies—the University of California system's first online undergraduate degree program.
2020 With Vilashini Cooppan, Carla Freccero, Nick Mitchell, Christine Hong, Nick Mitchell, T.J. Demos, and Karen Bassi. "Guest Commentary | Ending police presence at UCSC is first step." Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 19, 2020.
2020 With Marcia Ochoa. "On Intellectual Freedom" [to students of Kresge and Oakes Colleges]. Power and Representation a Kresge College Forum. Retrieved 20 February 2020.
2018 "Opinion: An education at UC Santa Cruz? We’d all be lucky to have one." Los Angeles Times. (Jan 10 2018)
2013 [Web] Software and Tutorial: Unpulser 3.4 (updated Winter 2013) "An Environment for Pre-compositional Planning and Analysis with Additive Rhythms". UI developed with Ian Saxton.
2010 "Schoenberg's ambivalent thought: subjectivity in 'Du leanest wider eine Silberweide..." [2nd of two papers downloadable here] Ch. 1 of Cox, Biro, Takesugi, Sigman, eds., Search: The Second Century of New Music. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
2007 “Perceiving and distinguishing simple timespan ratios without metric reinforcement.” Journal of New Music Research, 36/4 (December 2007), 313-336.
2006 “What are Musical Paradox and Illusion?” Review Essay, in American Journal of Psychology 120/1 (Spring 2007), 123-139.
2004 Essay: "Tough Questioning," in Shock and Awe: War on Words — Feminist Provocations 1. Bregje van Eekelen, Jennifer González, Bettina Stötzer, and Anna Tsing, Eds. New Pacific Press: Santa Cruz, 2004. 153-154.
2003 “John Adams and a Counterpoint of Contemporary Reasoning: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s El Niño, March 2003,” Echo V/1 (http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo/volume5-issue1/reviews/carson.html).
2003 [With Christopher Williams] “On the Piano Music of Benjamin Carson: A Correspondence of Essays.” Open Space Magazine 5 (Fall 2003), 231-250.
2022 Sideband Records 8. By A Moment And a Word: Music of Ben Leeds Carson. Reidemeister Move [Robin Hayward, Christopher Williams] and Dog Trio [Hanne Franzen, Pia Davila, and Dong Zhou].
2012 CD [SHH 884501678889]: “Anonyme” in Interstice: New Music for Saxophone. Rhonda Taylor, saxophones; with Ron Stabinsky.
2011 [Centaur Records CRC 3105] Pieces, Threaded, 1999-2009: Piano Music of Ben Leeds Carson
2010 [Albany Records TROY 1225] A is for Azimuth and Arnica: Music for Percussion by Ben Leeds Carson
2009 CD: Anahistoric: Music of Ben Leeds Carson. Complete recording of a concert of the same name. A 2009 Special Event at the Columbia University Music Performance Program. Engineered by Eric Parson and Josephson Studios.
2008 DVD: Takes to the Stage: An experiment in form and memory, for solo cello in concert. Video with animation, featuring cellist Franklin Cox at April in Santa Cruz Festival of Contemporary Music. 62’00”.
2008 “Peleas/Pelé”, in compilation CD: Soundcheck 3—New Music from UC San Diego. UC San Diego Department of Music.
