Arts Division
Professor, Music Department
Director, Graduate Studies in Music
Director, Creative Technologies
Faculty
Digital Arts and New Media
http://benleedscarson.com
http://hippogriffcookbook.com
http://music.ucsc.edu/faculty/Benjamin-Carson
http://startrekopera.com
Interview
Music Center
148
Tuesdays 11 AM - noon; Fridays 12:30-1:30 (Music) [+ check Google Calendar blc for zoom info]
Music Center
Ben Carson is a composer and theorist specializing in perception studies and popular culture studies in music. His music is available on Sideband Records, Centaur Records, Albany Records, and on other labels, and has been performed throughout the US and at international festivals, including "June in Buffalo," Gerngesehen (Köln), New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for the Contemporary Piano, at the Smithsonian, Blurred Edges in Hamburg, and at REDCAT in LA, where critic Mark Swed called Carson's approach "a kind of acoustic acupressure". 'Portrait' concerts have been dedicated to Carson's work at Sydney Conservatory's 2005 "Music and Social Justice" conference, at the Music Performance Program at Columbia University (2009), and for the International Society for Improvised Music (2010).
Carson has been an Artist/Researcher-in-Residence for the Perception Laboratory at IRCAM (Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris. Carson's piano music is the subject of an essay collection with Christopher Williams in the Open Space Journal; his writing also appears in ECHO, the Journal of New Music Research, the Institute for Advanced Feminist Studies' Shock and Awe: War on Words, and in the American Journal of Psychology, and in other publications. Carson is a 2011 recipient of the Center for Teaching Development's Excellence in Teaching Award, the Arts Division Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship. He currently (AY 2023-2024) serves as Director of Graduate Studies in Music and Director of Creative Technologies, a new undergraduate major in emerging arts technologies, which is the first online degree program in the UC System.
Composition, improvisation, popular culture, modernity, philosophy of mind, musical form, harmony, counterpoint, empirical musicology, music perception.
Composition, tonal analysis, rhythm perception, improvisation, Schoenberg, popular culture, music and identity
Composition, empirical musicology, history of theory, rhythm systems, critical Schenker studies, Schoenberg, linear and tonal analysis, set theory, popular culture, race, cultural identity in the U.S., post-psychoanalytic feminist theory, social production theory
2014 Excellence in Mentorship Award (Arts Division, UCSC)
2014 (and multiple prior years) Faculty Senate Committee on Research Grantee
2011 Excellence in Teaching Award (Center for Teaching and Learning, UCSC)
2011 Instructional Improvement Grant (Center for Teaching and Learning, UCSC)
2009-10 Faculty Senate Special Research Grant recipient
2008 Excellence in Teaching (Official Nominee); Arts Research Initiative Grantee, UC Santa Cruz
2007 Arts Research Initiative Major Project Grantee, UC Santa Cruz
2005 Arts Research Initiative Grantee; Faculty Senate COR Research Grantee, UC Santa Cruz
2001 First Prize, British and International Bass Festival/International Bass Society, London, England: Detáler (contrabass and chamber orchestra)
2000 Center for the Humanities Dissertation Fellow, UC San Diego
2000 Featured Young Composer, 25th Anniversary Festival of New Music, State University of New York, Buffalo
1999 Visiting Artist Grantee, French Ministry of Culture/Centre Georges Pompidou
1998 Robert Erickson Prize for Excellence in Research (UC San Diego)
1993 Key to the University Outstanding service to Willamette University
2015 pianist/actor with Rhonda Taylor (saxophones), Robert Lopez (kit), Jason Hoopes (contrabass) Thom Pain : Based on Nothing. Adaptation of Will Eno's 2005 Play of the same name (April 4, Santa Cruz, CA).
2013 Pieces, Threaded: complete set in (piano) recital, with readings. Academy of Performing Arts (May 9, Prague, Czech Republic).
2012 “Quartet for Strangers” at the New School for Social Research / iLand Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Science and Dance (New York NY, March 23). With Ivan Raykoff.
2010 pianist with Glenn Whitehead, trumpets, and Rhonda Taylor, saxophones, and the Performance Studies Ensemble in "Snow Bloom—Ochromonas," concerto for Trumpet and 10-20 instruments (December 10, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs).
2009 pianist with Scott Walton, bass; Russell Greenberg, drums; Rhonda Taylor, saxophones; Glenn Whitehead, trumpets. "Anticline/Syncline," opening the annual conference of the International Society for Improvised Music. Kuumbwa Jazz Center (Santa Cruz, CA December 5).
2005 Subjectivity and Collectivity in Music for the Piano. Music of Rick Burkhardt, Fredric Rzewksi, and Ben Carson. Sydney Auditorium, for the Musicological Society of Australia. October 1, 2005.
2004 Anahistoric (see “Compositions” above). Guest conductor with the Empyrean Ensemble, performing April in Santa Cruz, 2005
2002 Quintet for Piano and Strings Op. 114 in A Major “The Trout,” Franz Schubert. May 2003, with members of the La Jolla Symphony.
2002 HDDKR, Lindsay Vickary. Pianist, with winds and percussion trio. November 16, 2002. San Diego, California.
2002 Conductor/Artistic Direction: Amahl and the Night Visitors. Claremont Small Opera. December 20, 2002. Claremont, California.
2001 Kaffe Cantata (Schlendrian), J.S. Bach. Baritone soloist, March 2002, with University of California at San Diego’s “La Banda Bastarda.”
2001 Artistic director, harpsichord soloist and other continuo work: music of Campra, Mondonville, Monteverdi, Biber, Hottetterre, Morita, and Bach, with “La Banda Bastarda.” [David Ryther, Charon Rosner, and Fiona Chatwin, co-directors] November 2001, San Diego, CA.
2000 Cadenza Arioso, Harvey Sollberger. Harpsichord soloist with the La Jolla Symphony. March 2000. Performances of music of Vivaldi, Bach, Walton, Bolles, Schoenberg, Webern, Strauss, with the La Jolla Symphony. October 2000-2002.
2013
Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler—Series: Lectures in Composition "Toward a Radical Empirical Music" [5/16 Berlin, DE]
AMU (Academy for the Performing Arts)—Series: Faculty Colloquium Lecture-Recital "Writing for the Piano" [5/9 Prague, CZ]
AMU (Academy for the Performing Arts)—Electro-acoustic Seminar "Toward a Radical Empirical Music" [5/6 Prague, CZ]
2012
Northwestern University's Composition Colloquium. "Unpulser: An Environment for Composition with Additive Rhythms" [4/3 Chicago IL]
iLand & the New School for Social Research's Cage Centennary Symposium: Moving Into the Out There: Indeterminacy & Improvisation in Performance & Environmental Practice. "Radical Empirical Music + Premier of 'Four Strangers' " and "Panel Discussion on Cage, Indeterminacy, and Scientific Inquiry" [3/24 New York, NY]
UCSD's "Focus on Composition": "On Voice and Pulse: a Radical-Empirical Technique for Rhythm and Form" [3/13 La Jolla CA]
2011
UCSD's "Focus on Performance" Series: A is for Azimuth and Arnica (with Leah Bowden) [1/21 La Jolla CA]
2010
"Snow Bloom: Ochromonas" for Trumpet, Baritone Saxophone, and Chamber Orchestra. Commissioned by Glen Whitehead. University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Visual And Performance Studies series. With Rhonda Taylor, Jane Rigler, William Malone. [12/10 Colorado Springs CO]
2009
"Syncline/Anticline." Headline event at the International Society of Improvised Music Annual Festival. With Russell Greenberg, Rhonda Taylor, Scott Walton, Glen Whitehead [12/4 Santa Cruz CA].
Music of Ben Leeds Carson," a Music Performance Program special event at Columbia University. 11 written works, in 3 threaded collective improvisations by 8 musicians. With YARN/WIRE Quartet, and guests Katie Schlaikjer, Rhonda Taylor,Glen Whitehead, Chris Williams [3/26 New York NY].
2008
Lecture: “Schoenberg’s Compositional Economy.” Columbia University Music Theory Colloquium [2/25 New York NY].
Lecture: “Toward Some Mathematical Determinants of Unpulsedness.” Columbia University Electroacoustic Composition Seminar [3/2 New York NY].
Lecture: “Hearing Time Freely: Explorations of Rhythmic Heterarchy.” Current Issues Colloquium, UCSC Department of Music [5/8 Santa Cruz CA].
2007
“Perceiving and distinguishing simple timespan ratios without metric reinforcement.” Read at the annual national conference of the Society for Music Theory [11/15 Baltimore MD].
2004
Lecture “Compositional Economy and Self-Identical Bodies in New Music.” Oakes College, UC Santa Cruz:Cultural Studies Colloquium [5/26 Santa Cruz CA]
2009 “Schoenberg’s ambivalent thought: subjectivity in ‘Du lehnest wider eine Silberweide…’” In The Second Century of New Music: Search Yearbook Volume I (forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press, 2010)
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.
2003 “John Adams and a Certain 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.
Discography: On established labels
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
Discography: Independent Productions
2012 CD [SHH 884501678889]: Interstice: New Music for Saxophone. Rhonda Taylor, saxophones; with Ron Stabinsky.
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. Published by UC San Diego's Department of Music.
2001 CD: Piano Music of Benjamin Carson, 1999-2001. Produced at UC San Diego's Studio A, with assistance from the UCSD Center for the Humanities.
