Benjamin Barson

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BENJAMIN BARSON is a historian, baritone saxophonist, and political activist. He is an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His work emphasizes "music history from below" and has been published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese-language journals and several edited collections. He is a former Fulbright scholar to Mexico and has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin and UConn-Storrs. Also a composer, he is the recipient of the 2018 Johnny Mandel Prize from the ASCAP Foundation and has performed at a wide range of venues ranging from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to the Centro Cultural de Tijuana (CECUT). He has released two CDs as a bandleader and has composed music for several staged works. Barson, disturbed by the incredible oppression and ecological destructivity wrought by racial capitalism, employs a compositional practice that draws from the deep well of revolutionary musicians within the jazz tradition.