RED NOTE New Music Festival

Congratulations to Ben Morris (RED NOTE Workshop 2020 alumnus) on being named Assistant Professor of Composition at UMKC Conservatory!

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UMKC Conservatory is excited to announce our new faculty colleague, Dr. Ben Morris, Assistant Professor of Composition.

Ben 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.
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.

His works are published by Alias Press, an affiliated publisher of Theodore Presser.

⭐️ COMPOSER SPOTLIGHT: FERNANDO DIAS GOMES ⭐️
Meet Fernando Dias Gomes, one of the eight gifted composers participating in this year's RED NOTE New Music Festival Composition Workshop!

Tell us about your music! What excites you as a composer?
"What I love most about composing are the rehearsals and the collaboration with the performers. I enjoy the bonds that my music can create."

Can you tell us anything about your new piece for the RED NOTE Composition Workshop?
"It took me a while to find a subject for my new piece. I am aiming for something energizing and aggressive."

Is there a fun fact about yourself that you’d like to share?
"I love crafting origami: whenever I have the opportunity, I will fold a crane from a napkin or any piece of paper."

Learn more about Fernando here!
- https://www.fernando-dias-gomes.com/
- https://open.spotify.com/intl-pt/album/2UDGP9QNgEHCwwKPvIKzK0