Benjamin Damann is a composer & percussionist from Chicago. His internationally-performed works explore rhythm & meter in terms of memory, game, physicality, & complexity. Having grown up in the St. Louis hardcore scene, brutality & brevity are fundamental to his works.
His novel compositional technique, sporophony, applies granular operations to notated music, generating often-unexpected rhythmic terrains that necessitate irrational meters. Dedicated to exploring the limits of such meters, he is currently developing a series of method books on metric modulations and complex tuplets.
He is active in realizing experimental & electro-acoustic works for snare drum & multi-percussion as well as programming software interfaces to aid in the performance of such works. He has commissioned & premiered numerous works via “snippets,” a collaborative project to commission new miniatures for solo percussion.
His duo, thenlike?now, specializes in the performance of contemporary, electro-acoustic repertoire by living composers.
Benjamin obtained his PhD at the University of North Texas (2026) & has degrees from Bowling Green State University (MM, 2021) & Eastern Illinois University (BM 2018). Among others, his teachers have included Panayiotis Kokoras, Elainie Lillios, Paul Rennick, Sungji Hong, Dan Piccolo, & Jon Nelson.