Benjamin Boone
ULTRA SHORT BIO
Composer, educator and theorist Benjamin Boone was born in Statesville, NC in 1963; related to Daniel Boone; his father was a traveling glue salesman/furniture manufacturing trouble-shooter and his mother a homemaker and teacher; youngest of five sons; music career begun in grade-school when he wrote music for puppet shows; moved all over since; Fulbright Senior Specialist to the Republic of Moldova; recorded rhinoceros vocalizations in Zimbabwe; compositions performed all over the world and on numerous CD’s; award-winning teacher; was a Music Manager in New York; played sax all over the U.S.A. and Europe; loves to ski, compose, learn, read, teach and play with his wife and kids; teaches theory and composition at California State University, Fresno; loves "30 Rock,” "The Thomas Jefferson Hour" and the principles of the Enlightenment.
FULL-LENGTH BIO
Composer, educator and theorist Benjamin Boone (b. 1963), originally from Statesville, N.C., now resides in California where he is an Associate Professor of Music at California State University, Fresno. Prior to this appointment, Boone taught at the University of Tennessee where he received the "Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.”
A Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellow to the Univeritatea de Stat “Alecu Russo” (Republic of Moldova), his compositions have been performed in over seventeen countries -- from Carnegie Hall to China, Japan, Australia, Africa and Eastern/Western Europe. Boone’s compositions appear on over sixteen commercial CDs of performers/groups such as the Electronic Music Foundation, Vox Novus, the National Flute Choir, the New Century Saxophone Quartet, Steve Pollock/Branford Marsalis, Guy Livingston and Elizabeth Morrow, among others. His works have garnered honors from the International Society of Contemporary Music, the Olympia International Prize for Composition, Billboard Magazine, Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio), the National Association of Composers, The American Music Center, ASCAP, Meet the Composer/Southeastern Arts Federation, the National Flute Association, the Southeastern Composers' League, the Delius Foundation, and Boston University.
He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Fundación Valparaíso (Spain), the Aspen Music Festival Center for Compositional Studies/Advanced Master Class Program, "Words and Music" (international composition symposium sponsored by Indiana University and the United States Information Service), A*deVantgarde Festival für Nueue Musik, Munich/Office of the American Consulate, the North Carolina Arts Council Composition Fellowship and the Tennessee Arts Commission Composition Fellowship.
Recent commissions include Place Setting DJ, for solo piano, commissioned by Guy Livingston (Paris) for his upcoming CD and world tour, Don't Panic II -- the long awaited sequel to his acclaimed Don't Panic I, premiered in Paris in October 2007; Joropo Jam, 
for guitar and saxophone, commissioned by Alan Durst and Corey Whitehead for their debut Centaur Records CD, Tangos y Serenades, premiered in Beijing, China summer 2007; and Founding Fathers, which has been performed in New York, Montreal, Boston, Orlando, Raleigh, University of North Texas, and numerous other locations as part of the Vox Novus 2007 International Mix.
Boone's compositions are published by Latham Music, Alry Publications, Sentinel Dome, Eighth Note Publications (Canada) and VR Music. Over the Edge is the title track of a National Flute Choir CD (and appears on the Uptown Flutes’ CD Flute Renaissance); Alley Dance appears on the acclaimed New Century Saxophone Quartet's Channel Classics (Netherlands) CD Homegrown: Commissions, vol. I; Election Year appears on Arizona University Records’ CD Millennium Tribute to Adolph Sax, vol. IV; Buffing the Gut appears on Elizabeth Morrow's Centaur Records CD Soliloquy; Rafflesia appears on Teresa Beaman’s Bella Classics CD Flute Flora; Tribute to Debussy’s Syrinx: The Wood Nymph of Nonacris appears on Nina Assimakopoulos’ Euterpe Recordings CD Arcadian Murmers; Four Corners and Center Stage appears on the Artship Records
CD Benjamin Boone; Psychotherapy appears on Clifford Leaman’s Equilibrium CD Illuminations; Drunken Bastards #2 appears on the Electronic Music Foundation’s State of the Union, 2001 compilation CD; three arrangements appear on the New Century Saxophone Quartet’s Channel Classics CD A New Century Christmas; and Harlem Sunset will be featured on Stephen Pollock’s upcoming Alanna Records release.
Boone has presented guest lectures and master classes at the Academy of Music (Moldova), Univeritatea de Stat “Alec Russo”(Moldova), the University of Magdeburg (Germany), the University of Erlangen (Germany), Charles University (the Czech Republic) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa), among others in the US. He has been in residence at festivals and colonies such as Fundación Valparaíso (Spain), May in Miami, June in Buffalo, the Bowling Green New Music Festival, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Aspen Music Festival and given presentations at conferences such as the Society of Composers (national and regional), National Flute Association, North American Saxophone Alliance (national and regional), National Association of Composers, World Saxophone Congress, Society for New Music, Conference on American Culture, Music Education Association, and International Trumpet Guild.
In addition to his activities as a composer, Boone has been engaged in significant research on speech from a musical perspective, as noted in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (under “blue note”) and in Creative Expressive Activities and Asperger’s Syndrome, by Judith Martinovich. Boone has also assisted a biologist with the infrasonic recording of rhinoceros vocalizations in Zimbabwe and Zambia; served as a music business manager in New York City; performed as a saxophonist throughout the United States and Europe; edited music theory manuscripts; researched the effect of University interaction with students at a Court School; and designed Service-Learning and Civic Engagement best-practices.
Boone studied with Jerry Coker, Gordon Goodwin, Charles Fussell, John A. Lennon and Bernard Rands (among several others) at the University of Tennessee (BM), Boston University (MM) and the University of South Carolina (DMA).
updated 10/16/07
