Ben Cosgrove

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Ben Cosgrove is a traveling composer-performer whose music explores themes of landscape, place, and environment. Described by the Boston Globe as “a sonic plein-air painter who uses his piano as a paintbrush,” Ben has performed in every U.S. state except for Delaware, collaborated with groups ranging from rock bands to research scientists, contributed music to several radio and film projects including the Ken Burns documentary The American Buffalo, and held residencies and fellowships with institutions including NASA, the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, Harvard University, Middlebury College, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art & Ecology. He performs regularly with a wide array of other musicians, and has published nonfiction about landscape and place in the pages of Orion, Taproot, Northern Woodlands, Appalachia, Wildsam, and other outlets.

Ben’s music has been called “beautiful and fascinating” (The Maine Edge), “deeply impressive” (Independent Clauses), and “immediately evocative and fully arresting… brim[ming] with technical mastery and emotional capital” (Seven Days). His newest record, Bearings, a collection of improvisation-based music that reflects upon the relationship between movement and place, was named one of the top albums of 2023 by Sound of Boston, who in their review described Ben as “a master of painting sonic portraits of curious, unexpected places.”