DR. BEN MORRIS C omposer
and Jazz Pianist
records and takes elements from Norwegian folk music, jazz, and contemporary chamber music. The music on the album garnered Ben two Downbeat Awards, two ASCAP Herb Alpert Jazz Composer Awards, a big band commission from New York Youth Symphony’s First Music Program, and an invitation to perform an original set with his quintet at the Newport Jazz Festival in 2019.
Also a versatile film, theatre, and opera composer, Ben is a frequent collaborator of librettist Laura Fuentes. His projects with Laura include Las Auténticas for the Washington National Opera American Opera Initiative, The Fall of Man and Other Tales, a multimedia work for the ATLAS B2 Black Box, Colorado Sky, a shadow puppet opera in collaboration with Sohap Ensemble, and The Rip Van Winkles, a youth opera commissioned by The Glimmerglass Festival. Ben scored the documentary films American River, which premiered at Montclair Film in 2021, and Saving the Great Swamp: The Battle to Defeat the Jetport, which won best documentary at the 2017 New Jersey Film Festival. He has worked as a music assistant, orchestrator, and copyist for documentary film composer and songwriter Michael Bacon in New York City.
Ben writes for unique ensembles that blur established genre expectations. He has collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Loop38, Jazz at Lincoln Center trombonist Vincent Gardner, unassisted fold, NOW Ensemble, Imani Winds, ~Nois, The Living Earth Show, Playground Ensemble, and the NDR Big Band. He has been a composer fellow at music festivals and workshops including the Aspen Music Festival, the American Composers Orchestra Jazz Composers Institute, Red Note Festival, Sibelius Academy Creative Dialogue, New Music on the Point, the International Gugak Workshop in South Korea, highScore, Source Song Festival, and the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and his concert music has received accolades including an ASCAP Morton Gould Award and the International Society of Bassists Composition Contest Grand Prize.
Ben is an Assistant Professor of Composition at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in composition at the University of Colorado Boulder as an ATLAS Fellow studying with Carter Pann and Michael Theodore, received a Master of Music degree from the Rice University Shepherd School of Music, where he was a Brown Fellow studying with Karim Al-Zand and Anthony Brandt, and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Music from the University of Miami Frost School of Music, where he studied with Lansing McLoskey, Gary Lindsay, and Martin Bejerano Outside of composing and teaching, Ben enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, and exploring museums with his partner, pianist Maggie Hinchliffe.
Y MIR ’ S BONES
influence from Norwegian folk music and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jEkZfOUPvc
Ymir’s Bones (2021) is a big band piece inspired by Norse Mythology and recorded by the NDR Big Band in Hamburg, Germany
JOHN COLTRANE
ARRANGEMENTS
with Joe Lovano and Toronto Symphony https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xqx5c448jYyNJXlxl8nYezxFtUl-jFv?usp=sharing
Ben arranged three tunes, “Impressions,” “My One and Only Love,” and “Crescent,” featuring Joe Lovano and the Toronto Symphony conducted by Edwin Outwater in 2024.
THE FALL OF MAN AND OTHER TALES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKr6K-ZEEj0
The Fall of Man and Other Tales (2022) is a multimedia jazz song cycle in nine parts presented at the ATLAS B2 Blackbox in Boulder, Colorado, with a libretto by Laura Fuentes and projections by Holiday Darling.
fountain... The verdict here is an emphatic thumbs up." Jack Bowers, All About Jazz
"An often-cinematic affair that pulls in worldly influences from all parts of the globe that Morris has resided, this is an exceptional display of modern jazz. 9/10." Tom Haugen, Take Effect
One of the Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2022 David Basse
f or The Rip Van Winkles
“…the piece deftly showcased the young performers in music of appropriate difficulty for each age group. The catchiest number of the evening came from the ensemble of grandparents: Performed by the youngest children, bent over walkers, their disco-inspired theme song urged the nervous parents to remember that 'You have to live a little when you’re a kid.' The audience of enthusiastic adults and children was a testament to Glimmerglass’s efforts to be not just an artistic powerhouse, but a centerpiece of its upstate community.” Heidi Waleson, Wall Street Journal
f or Longleaf
“There was so much thought behind Ben Morris’s work, yet without being didactic. I love the sound of fire in that work–crackle, roar, fizzle. Kudos to the Loop38 brass players who really got to shine in Longleaf [It] is the kind of work that makes a great impact beyond the concert hall It was great to see how the project brought together musicians, forestry experts, rural residents, city people, and nature lovers.” Sherry Cheng, Arts and Culture Texas Magazine
f or Hallingdal Fre yle khs
"Ben’s composition, Hallingdal Freylekhs, imagined a folk music fusion drawn from his father’s Ashkenazi Jewish heritage and his mother’s Norwegian cultural background. The result was a lyrical essay in a classical style that subtly shifted from themes reminiscent of Grieg- and Sibelius-flavored Norwegian American folk dance to rhythms evoking Klezmer bands and Yiddishkeit at their height. The two worlds truly did unite in a marriage of styles that complemented each other joyously and expressed something greater than either could on its own." Howard Wershil, EarRelevant
For more samples of my work, please visit my website and social media, listed below:
Personal website: http://www.benmorrismusic.com
Bandcamp: https://benmorrismusic.bandcamp.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/benmorrismusic Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/bmorris21293
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bmorris21293/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benmorrismusic IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5511276/
