Ben Hjertmann Komponist

I am a composer, teacher, and vocalist based in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. I compose notated music for ensembles, and I write/perform with the Grant Wallace Band and Kong Must Dead. Prior to this, I composed/performed/directed experimental music (voice/guitar/baglama) with the Sissy-Eared Mollycoddles.

I cut my teeth in the Chicago new music scene 2007-2014 and remain a long-distance admirer and friend of that community.

I have had the privilege to collaborate with adventurous chamber ensembles including PRISM Quartet, Zzyzx Quartet, Third Coast Percussion, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, New Thread Saxophone Quartet, Friction Quartet, Spektral Quartet, Borromeo Quartet, Anubis Quartet, Callithumpian Consort, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and many others. Along with Grant Wallace Band I wrote and performed a dramatic song cycle with the Houston Grand Opera in 2016. My large ensemble works has been performed by Northwestern, UT-Austin, Louisiana State, Michigan State, Central Michigan, Kansas State, Lawrence, U-Nebraska at Lincoln, NYU, and Texas Tech. In 2013, I collaborated with 34 wind ensembles to create a new work through a "choose-your-own-adventure" process in which students and conductors voted for one of two options at five pivotal moments in the piece.

My music has been featured at Resonant Bodies Festival, Fast Forward Austin, Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinics, the conference of the College Band Directors National Association, and the South by Southwest NonClassical showcase. I was a resident artist at the MacDowell Colony, 360 XOCHI QUETZAL, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Shell Lake Arts Center. I was a Fellow at the 2013 Bang on a Can Summer Music Institute, and at the 2011 Other Minds Festival. I've been honored to have received awards including the 2015 Barlow Prize, the 2014 Third Coast Percussion Emerging Composers Partnership, a 2014 Project Grant from New Music USA, and first prize (Grade VI) in the 2013 Frank Ticheli Composition Contest.

My work has been featured Spektral Quartet’s debut album Chambers, released by Parlour Tapes+, and pianist Nick Phillips's American Vernacular album released on New Focus Recordings. I've produced recordings including Grant Wallace Band's Axle of the World (with Rabbit), my chamber-metal dissertation album Angelswort, and three of my avant-pop albums as Kong Must Dead.



I am the organizer of the John Cage Memorial Random Composer Award. My wife Madelyn and I founded the award in 2011 in honor of Cage's 99th birthday. The award celebrates serendipity and rewards the act of composing itself, not our opinions of its results.



I received my Doctor of Music degree in composition from Northwestern University in 2013. My dissertation research was on microtonal harmonic structures derived from sum & difference tones. Prior to that I earned a Bachelor of Music degree in composition from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2007. I previously taught music technology, composition, theory, aural skills, and song writing at Northwestern University as well as theory and composition for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. Currently I am serving as Assistant Professor of Theory & Composition at Appalachian State University, where I am the area coordinator for the Composition degree and teach composition lessons, contemporary theory, and electronic music.