Ben Morris
Dr. Ben Morris is a composer and jazz pianist whose music crosses genre boundaries and tells unconventional stories that often engage with the natural world. His music has been described as "witty" (Wall Street Journal), “heart-touching” (OperaGene), "fresh" (All About Jazz), and "wonderfully inventive" (Tom Cipullo). He earned his bachelor's degree at University of Miami, master's degree at Rice University, and Doctor of Musical Arts at University of Colorado Boulder, all in music composition. Ben is currently an Assistant Professor of Composition at University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Morris's creative work and research is often inspired by his Norwegian heritage. He lived in Oslo, Norway, on a Fulbright Grant composing a work for extended big band and video and received an American-Scandinavian Foundation Grant to research the influence of folk music on Norwegian jazz. His debut album, "Pocket Guides," was released in June 2022 on Origin/OA2 Records and takes elements from Norwegian folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music. The album garnered him two Downbeat Awards, an ASCAP Herb Alpert Award, a big band commission from New York Youth Symphony's First Music and an invitation to perform with his quintet at Newport Jazz Festival.
Also a versatile film, theatre, and opera composer, Morris 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. His projects with his librettist collaborator Laura Fuentes 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 writes for unique ensembles that blur established genre expectations. He has collaborated with the American Composers Orchestra, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Loop38, Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire, unassisted fold, NOW Ensemble, Unheard-of//Ensemble, Imani Winds, ~Nois, The Living Earth Show, Playground Ensemble, and the NDR Big Band. His compositions and arrangements have been performed by Terrance Blanchard, Joe Lovano, Ingrid Jensen, Vincent Gardner, The Bacon Brothers, and Toronto, Boston, BBC, Nashville, San Diego, and St. Louis Symphonies. 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 has attended artist residencies at Yaddo, Helene Wurlitzer, I-Park, Brush Creek, Soaring Gardens, Visby, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center.
His works are published by Alias Press, an affiliated publisher of Theodore Presser. Outside of composing and teaching, Ben enjoys traveling, hiking, reading, model railroading, and exploring museums with his partner, pianist Maggie Hinchliffe.