Lipscomb orchestra director nominated for Latin GRAMMY®
Associate Professor Ben Blasko nominated in 2024 for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
By Janel Shoun Smith |
Ben Blasko, associate professor and director of instrumental studies, was nominated in 2024 for a Latin GRAMMY in Best Contemporary Classical Composition as one of the team that produced Caribbean Berecuse, a piece included on the album Panamericano.
Blasko served as the recording engineer for the piece which was performed by the North Texas Wind Symphony and the Barcelona Clarinet Players conducted by Eugene Migliaro Corporon.
The Latin Recording Academy® is an international nonprofit dedicated to nurturing, celebrating, honoring, and elevating Latin music and its creators.
Dr. Ben Blasko with seven of the students who both composed the orchestrations and attended the performance in the Fisher Center.
“I take pride in the fact that we captured the piece in the best possible way, and it was the whole team who made it special,” said Blasko. “With a Cuban composer, the Barcelona players from Spain and an American symphony, it was a meeting of so many different heritages and languages, and we all came together in Texas.”
Caribbean Berecuse was recorded in 2022 in the Murchison Performing Arts Center at the University of North Texas and released in June 2024. Blasko spent the better part of a year, he said, recording, editing and mastering the work.
Blasko went on to record several more works with the Barcelona Clarinet Players, including works for videos shot around the world, and for the North Texas Wind Symphony, one of the most recorded classical music ensemble with more than 3,000 pieces recorded, he said.
Blasko holds degrees from the University of North Texas, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Messiah University. He has conducted groups such as the Nashville Symphony, Boston Symphony, the North Texas Wind Symphony, the Green Hills Wind Symphony and the Agora Brass Ensemble.
His music has been played all over the world by groups such as the Nashville, Boston, and Colorado Symphonies, the United States Air Force and Navy Bands, Israeli State Band, and numerous collegiate ensembles. Additionally, he has orchestrated music for OneRepublic, Tommee Profitt, Jordan Smith, Colton Dixon, and Disney.
Blasko came to Lipscomb in 2018 teaching a wind ensemble class, a fundamentals of music class, a conducting class and private brass lessons. During his time at Lipscomb, he has conducted the student concert orchestra for live film screenings, conducted the Nashville Symphony for a premiere Lipscomb event and has engaged students in composing live orchestral versions of music by professional artists on Tommee Profitt’s The Birth of a King album.
He was a quarterfinalist for the GRAMMY Music Educator Award in 2023.
Ben Blasko, Lipscomb's Wind Ensemble & Chamber Orchestra