Ben Richter
Ben Richter is a composer, accordionist, and director of Ghost Ensemble. In his music, sound worlds of constant transformation emerge through shifting timbres, distant pulses, and microtonal fluctuations, a flux aesthetic inspired by the ebb and flow found in quantum and geological time. His artistic research explores the potential of listening to create experiences of community healing, focusing on music that shifts our attention, awareness, and experience of time.
Ben Richter’s chamber ensemble work Wind People, “a massive drone of lapidary detail that thrums, throbs, and glides with surging and ebbing density” (Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily), was featured on Ghost Ensemble’s debut LP, We Who Walk Again (2018, Indexical); the solo album Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean (2017, Infrequent Seams) pairs orchestral and electronic works with the title track’s immersive just-intonation accordion soundscape, hailed by Stephen Smoliar (The Rehearsal Studio) as “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening”. In addition to Ghost Ensemble, performers that have commissioned and premiered Ben Richter’s work include SEM Ensemble, Wild Rumpus, Hypercube, Ostravska Banda, Canticum Ostrava, Capella Ornamentata, Nieuw Ensemble, accordion duo Toeac, trombonist William Lang, and harpist Somna M Bulist.
A student of Pauline Oliveros, Ben Richter holds degrees from Bard College and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and is currently completing the DMA at the California Institute of the Arts, where he teaches composition, accordion, and music theory.