Ben Leeds Carson’s music is performed at wide-ranging venues for experimental music, including at SUNY Buffalo's 2023 Visiting Artist Series, Blurred Edges (Hamburg 2020); the Smithsonian Institute's Meyer Series (Washington DC 2019); the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva (Mexico City 2018). Ben Carson has been an Artist/Researcher-in-Residence for the Perception Laboratory at IRCAM (Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique), and at Paris University VI, where his collaborations focused on the perception of complex rhythm perception, and led to empirical work and publications with American Journal of Psychology, and the Journal of New Music Research. Carson's opera merging a Star Trek teleplay with historical renderings of the Orpheus myth was premiered (June 2016) in a workshop performance directed by acclaimed opera director and Star Trek—Next Generation actor John de Lancie.

Since 2003, Ben has served the UC Santa Cruz Music Department faculty, where he is Professor, and will serve as Inaugural Director of Creative Technologies (2023-2025). He is a recipient of grants and awards recognizing excellence in teaching.

ARI Supported Project: 

Opportunity Equity for Young Composers Emphasizing Cross-cultural Practices

In the academic year 2020-2021, the Department of Music has begun to make good on the second phase of its promising ten-year planning process to decenter white and European art music practices in its curriculum. The first phase, implemented in 2011-12, was a broad curriculum overhaul that ended subsidization of a structurally Eurocentric curriculum by restructuring requirements in entry-level and upper-division coursework, enabling faculty support for diverse literacies. In the second phase, we delivered the more challenging task of diversifying pathways to our degrees by investing in required courses that enact bold new learning outcomes, pertaining to music literacies and practices in a range of South Asian, Central Asian, African, and Latin-American traditions. We culminated this overhaul with (among other things) a scholarship supporting student creative work in support of justice and equity, and new faculty hires.

Fulfilling the promise of structural change in the music department also requires year-to-year investment in the opportunities that our structural changes represent. This project will address the structural inequities that result from Eurocentric legacies in UC institutions, by supporting high-quality, formal performance resources for students pursuing composition and performance methods outside the norms of conventionally notated Western practices. Funding will be dedicated to two intensive needs: (1) honoraria for accomplished performers in a variety of instrumental specializations, supporting rehearsals distributed over three weeks’ time, and (2) professional sound and recording technology to support concert and recording production for students’ works.

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