Benjamin Downs is a pianist, scholar, and teacher based in Minneapolis, MN, United States. As a performer, he has been a prize winner in numerous national and international piano competitions including the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Young Artist Competition, the Chautauqua International Piano Competition, the Northwestern Piano Competition, Schubert Club, and the Cincinnati Chamber Music Competition. He has performed throughout the United States, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland as both a soloist and chamber musician. He has been a featured performer at venues including New York City’s WMP Concert Hall, the Bowdoin Music Festival, Brevard Music Festival, Chautauqua Music Festival, and the Linton Chamber Music Series. Some of his musical collaborators include members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Mill City String Quartet, and others. He has been an instructor at places including Stony Brook University, Macalester College, the MacPhail Center for Music, and is currently the director and lead faculty for a group of ambitious young musicians at Shattuck St. Mary’s. He completed his DMA in piano performance at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music where his primary teacher was James Tocco. He also studied with Eugene and Elisabeth Pridinoff and Michael Chertock.
Benjamin is also a musicologist and music theorist. He earned a PhD in the History and Theory of Music from Stony Brook University in 2018, specializing in philosophies of listening and European avant-garde music since 1968. He has received many awards for his scholarship, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a Paul Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship, and two DAAD Fellowships. His work has been published in the Journal for Music Theory, Paul Sacher Stiftung’s Mitteilungen, and Music Research Forum.
He now lives in the Twin Cities, where he performs, teaches, and is the Director of the Shattuck-St. Mary’s Pre-Conservatory Program.