Ben Richter

Featuring Cassia Streb, Christine Tavolacci, & Scott Worthington

In its West Coast premiere, composer-accordionist Ben Richter’s “Laramidia” creates an alien tonal landscape alternating among timbral fluctuations, melody and drone, and gradual resolution of shimmering, pulsing microtonal intervals. 

Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, Ben’s music orients toward the vast and infinitesimal timescales we do not experience in everyday life. Adding flute (Christine Tavolacci), viola (Cassia Streb), and contrabass (Scott Worthington) to Richter's just-intonation accordion, Laramidia extends the musical universe established on the 2023 2CD Aurogeny, “an epic symphony of accordion mastery” (Noel Gardner, Buzz), "consistently fascinating ... pulsating, scintillating ... with momentous results" (Julian Cowley, The Wire), the follow-up to 2017’s prepared accordion quintet Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean, “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening” (Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio). Ben is also the Artistic & Executive Director of Ghost Ensemble and music/sound curator of UMass-Amherst’s Futuring Lab, holds a Performer-Composer DMA from CalArts, and has collaborated with Loadbang, House On Fire Trio, Middle Ear Project, SEM Ensemble, Nomi Epstein, Carmina Escobar, Jeonghyeon Joo, Ulrich Krieger, Catherine Lamb, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Michael Pisaro, and David Rothenberg.