Hello! 

I am a bassist/improviser/composer currently based in Southeast MI.  

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Ben Willis

Ben Willis is a bassist whose affinities lie in collaborative projects, new music, improvisation, and the merging of cross-disciplinary elements. He's performed his original collaborative work at venues and festivals around the U.S., including the International Society for Improvised Music Conference, Electroacoustic Barn Dance at the University of Mary Washington, the Whitewater Arts Alliance Series at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater and the Ratchet Series at the Skylark in Chicago. In 2013, he was a Robert Black Bass Fellow at the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. Much of his work highlights the importance of collaborative, performative process in the development of new art. He is a member of the Weather Duo, an electroacoustic ensemble with cellist Pat Reinholz, dedicated to performing new music that blends classical training with improvisation and folk idioms. The Weather Duo has contributed music to the Li Chiao Ping dance company, a video project with artist Doug Rosenberg and dancer Sally Gross, and composed occasional film scores. In live performance, they explore multimedia collaboration with the help of live video artist Anna Weisling. He has also toured and recorded as a sideman, working with many indie/folk artists, including Anna Vogelzang, Dietrich Gosser, and Thistle and the Thorns. He often participates in recitals of new music and collaborations with composers, and performs regularly with the jazz/rock project Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps, and the free improvisation trio Glacier. He currently resides in Ann Arbor, MI. He earned a BM in Performance at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and MM in Improvisation from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He's studied bass with Richard Davis, Diana Gannett, and Bob Hurst, and composition with Andrew Bishop.