Biography

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Ben Phelps (b. 1980) is currently earning a reputation as one of Southern California's most exciting young composers with his bold, original, and dramatically arresting music. Since relocating to Los Angeles, he has become very active in the city's ever expanding cultural scene, and hopes to help lead a new generation of Californian composers towards a new, reinvigorated concert music style.

Phelps's music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the internationally acclaimed Verdehr Trio, at the Aspen Music Festival, the Ashland New Music Concerts in Ashland, Oregon, by the UCLA Percussion Ensemble, the USC Symphony and Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Fireworks! Ensemble at the Oregon Bach Festival, in Germany by tenor Gregory Wiest, and at countless performances in Los Angeles through his frequent collaborations with the Definiens Project and What's Next? He has been commissioned by the Hanson Institute for American Music, the one-of-a-kind bass clarinet duo Sqwonk, the Tonoi Ensemble, the Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, and flutist Alaina Bercilla. His orchestral piece, Overture Maximus, premiered by the USC Thornton Symphony, has received multiple radio broadcasts in Los Angeles on classical KUSC 91.5 and in Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. The piece and others of Ben Phelps were also the subject of an extended feature by Martin Perlich on KCSN 88.5 Arts and Roots Radio, as part of his Arts and Roots Forum interview series.

Phelps is a member of Rogue Artists Ensemble, a pioneering theater / puppeteering troupe based in Los Angeles which the LA Times recently said “set a new standard for sub-99-seat theater.” His music for his numerous collaborations with the Rogue’s has been called “sonically brilliant” by the Orange County Weekly, and "enchanting" and "haunting" by the LAWeekly. Rogue productions with Phelps's music have been seen at such Southern California venues as the [Inside] the Ford Theater and South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. The 2011 production D is for Dog appeared on several national theater critic's Best of 2011 lists.

Phelps is also an active performing percussionist. He is currently principal percussionist with the Santa Monica Symphony, and has been seen performing new music in the LAPhil’s groundbreaking 2006 Minimalist Jukebox Festival, as solo percussionist in a performance of British wunderkind Thomas Adès's breakout opera Powder Her Face, conducted by Adès himself, at the Ojai Music Festival, as a guest percussionist with the LA Percussion Quartet, and as principal percussionist with What's Next? An exceptional marimbist, he has premiered many of his own works, and was the percussion soloist for the world premier of the revised Cronica, a percussion concerto by Ian Krouse, in UCLA’s Royce Hall. Steve Reich called his performance of Nagoya Marimbas at a concert honoring Reich's 70th birthday "the best I've ever seen- and I don't say that." He has attended the Aspen Music Festival as both a percussionist and a composer, and formerly was timpanist of the YMF Debut Orchestra and the American Youth Symphony, where he also served as principal percussionist.

He holds a B.A. and Master’s Degree in Music from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is currently pursuing a DMA at the USC Thornton School of Music. He has studied with Ian Krouse, Don Crockett, Paul Chihara, Frank Ticheli, Frederick Lesemann, the late Jerry Goldsmith, iconoclastic musicologist Susan McClary, and percussionist Mitch Peters.