Benjamin Shirley is a musician, composer, educator, and organizer based in Atlanta, GA. Primarily a cellist, Benjamin has sought to incorporate his love of avant-garde jazz, old-time fiddle, and experimental classical traditions into a dynamic, creative, and personal vernacular. He has performed in hundreds of concerts across the U.S. and Europe with groups including experimental orchestra Faun and a Pan Flute, improvising quintet Mute Sphere, creative jazz trio BASrelief, “deep listening Appalachia” duo Whispers of Night, and garage-classical Artifactual String Unit.  Engaging as an instrumentalist and composer for each of these groups, he is dedicated to a highly collaborative mode-- instigating flows of invention, devising unexpected structures, and arriving at uncharted musical destinations. He has performed with ensembles such as Bent Frequency, the Atlanta Contemporary Ensemble, the Albany, GA Symphony, and the Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra, and at major festivals including Big Ears in Knoxville, TN and the Black Mountain College’s {Re]Happening.  Benjamin holds degrees in music and political science from UNC Chapel Hill and a certificate in music education from Georgia State University.  As a devoted student of music, he has sought out expansive learning opportunities including a course with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan University, studies with the Central Javanese gamelans at Yale University and Wesleyan, and selection for the Silk Road Ensemble's Global Musician Workshop at DePauw University.  In 2018, Benjamin founded the Past Now Tomorrow record label to document the creative music happening in Atlanta and the South.  Named a 2021-2022 Fellow of the Jon Bekoff Project for the Advancement of Georgia Old-Time Music and in 2023 the PREMIER: Performance Residencies in Electronic Music for Interdisciplinary Education Research at GA Tech, Benjamin continues to garner inspiration from the music traditions of the past, while pursuing a music practice aimed at the future horizons of creativity.

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