Benjamin Carson1
Benjamin Carson's work as a composer is supported by a
variety of theory and research, including disciplines of history, critical
gender studies, and cognitive science. Both in scholarship and in musical practice,
Carson is primarily concerned with the sometimes unpredictable locations of
musical "subjects," which he defines broadly as any identity-bearing
aspects of musical experience.
Carson's music has been performed at local and international
festivals, including Aspen, the 25th-anniversary "June in Buffalo"
(2000) festival of new music, the Sydney Conservatory's Music and Social
Justice conference
(2005), and at the New England Conservatory's Summer Institute for Contemporary
Piano Performance (2004). Carson's music has been supported by a number of
international awards and research grants, including the first prize in chamber
music (2001) for the London-based International Bass Society. Carson's piano music is the
subject of essays by music critic Christopher Williams in the Fall 2003 issue
of The OPEN SPACE Magazine.
Ben Carson completed his PhD (2001) at the University of
California, San Diego, where he developed a habit of working across
disciplinary boundaries. He has collaborated in projects at the Institute de
Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique in Paris, and at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. He has lectured in
the series Perception et Cognition Auditives (Paris Universite VI), at the controversial Thurgood Marshall College
Writing Program (UC San Diego), and at the UC Santa Cruz Cultural Studies
Colloquium. Carson presents his work at conferences not only in musicology and
music theory, but in cognitive psychology, history, and the interdisciplinary
humanities.
Carson's creative works explore the connections and
distinctions between event groups, especially in regards to the ways that one
kind of connection or distinction (melodic, rhythmic, timbral, contrapuntal)
might conflict with another. Carson also attempts, in his research, to broaden
these technical issues to address questions about the history and ideology of
compositional method.2
In 2003, Dr. Carson joined the department of music at UC
Santa Cruz, as an assistant professor of composition and theory. He offers
seminars in composition and theory for the DMA program in Composition, and also
teaches for UCSC's MFA program in Digital Arts and New Media.
1. This
lengthy bio may be edited through (1) omission of the fourth paragraph, and/or
(2) combination of second and third paragraphs. Please contact me for
alternate versions.
2. Specifics are not warranted in a short biography, but
these "questions about...compositional method" should be clarified, a
little: How do composers' works reveal characteristics of consciousness, or a
sense of being in the world? In what ways does the structure of a musical idea
reflect the nature of ideas in general? Can musical practices offer us insights
into particular ways that we relate to information and identity?