Ben Zucker
Action shot: performing at 2021 Ostrava New Music Days (photo by Martin Popelar)
For this week’s blog, we are introducing Ben Zucker! Ben is a composer involved in mostly music based practices experimenting with combinations of with a focus on notation, improvisation, and media.His output includes avant-guard chamber music, open scores, and albums of electroacoustic music. He has also had an active performing career spanning a wide variety of instruments including brass, percussion, voice, keyboard, and electronics, as a soloist, ensemble member, and bandleader in contemporary classical and free jazz settings. Additionally, he has been equally involved in theater and film work as an actor and designer.
A Theater in the Dark Presents: “A War of the Worlds”, a Live Online Audio Play
Ben originally grew up outside of Berkeley, California, went to school on the East Coast, traveled to the UK for a master’s program, and currently lives in Chicago as a doctoral student at Northwestern University. His dissertation covers topics on music philosophy, such as the ontology of indeterminate music, asking, “How do we know what a piece is? What could this piece be to us?”
When asking Ben about his collaborative work and art mediums he enjoys working on, his response touched on the importance of theater and the influence it has had on his creative practices. He’s has been involved with theater work for practically as long as he’s been doing music and has found that immersive theater is a very involved process from the “planning and timing to the sheer logistics. You have to make sure everyone is on the same page, knowing how people are going to work and what people would like to do.”
Photo by KT Shivak
In working on virtual projects, Ben has come to understand that it has brought upon a new way of thinking through the creative process, because “you aren’t physically sharing the room with people.” He’s gotten to broaden his relationships with people he most likely wouldn’t have met otherwise and said that, “because you don’t have that shared space, you really have to work to be on an equitable and respectful footing, making sure everyone is with it and with each other. Sometimes we don’t necessarily know what shape our project will turn out to be, but the main thing is to not doubt that something interesting will come about.”
For Ben, one of the guiding principles that Nomadic Soundsters has helped boost forward is staying open to things and getting more comfortable with the unexpected. “It can get depressing, lonely, and tunnel visioned, with all quality of life turned off for a while until something is completed, but you have to remember that creativity is a bunch of processes that you have to honor and support every step of the way.”
Film still from "Lateral Growth, Lateral Being" (original film and music project)
