Ben David Aronson

Ben David Aronson serves as Adjunct Professor of Low Brass at SUNY Geneseo, where he is pleased to instruct individual students of all low brass instruments and to direct the Geneseo Low Brass Ensemble. As a teacher, his top priority is to feed his students’ curiosity and to meet them for each lesson and rehearsal with renewed curiosity and enthusiasm of his own: about music and musicianship, about brass playing, and about learning. Having worked with students of all ages, skill levels, and personalities, he takes satisfaction from helping people to improve themselves in these areas, to recognize and apply their skills as broadly as possible, and to have fun playing their instruments. His research interests include developing improved teaching and learning opportunities for underserved student populations, and historical performance practices for music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque. He is co-founding faculty of the Texas Trombone Institute (formerly Tomball Trombone Institute), an annual summer workshop for Houston-area middle school trombonists, and has presented his work on this project with his faculty colleagues at the International Trombone Festival. In addition to his activities at SUNY Geneseo, Ben David holds teaching positions at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, the Hochstein School of Music and Dance, and the Eastman Community Music School. As a performer, Ben David is active throughout the United States. Regionally, he has worked extensively with the Rochester, Erie and Buffalo Philharmonic orchestras, and Symphoria among others. He is a member of the Plymouth Brass Quintet and the Hohenfels Trombone Quartet, and has appeared frequently with the Symphoria Brass Quintet. In the summer of 2014, the Hohenfels quartet traveled to Rochester’s sister city of Würzburg, Germany under the auspices of the International Sister Cities of Rochester. They represented Rochester in its 50th anniversary celebration of cultural partnership with Würzburg. In the fall of 2013, they produced and released their debut album, Hohenfels On Tap, and recorded alongside RPO trombonist Lisa Albrecht for her 2020 solo release, Sound & Resound. As a historical trombonist, Ben David’s engagements include performing and recording with the Dark Horse Consort, Piffaro, Publick Musick, Apollo’s Fire, the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, Mercury! The Orchestra Redefined, Opera Lafayette, and the Washington National Cathedral Choir & Baroque Orchestra. In January of 2020, he travelled to Venice to perform with the Dark Horse Consort in a program of chamber music by Giovanni Gabrieli and his contemporaries in the Chiesa di San Rocco, where each of these composers once worked and performed. Ben David is also a founding member and co-Artistic Director of the chamber ensemble Incantare (incantaremusic.com), with whom he has toured in performances across the country and appeared as guest artists of the 2019 International Trombone Festival. Ben David holds the Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with former RPO principal trombonist Mark Kellogg. At Eastman, he was privileged to perform as a member of the Eastman Trombone Choir, which travelled to the 2011 International Trombone Festival in Nashville as winners of the Emory Remington Trombone Choir Competition. Ben David holds the Bachelor of Arts from the University of Rochester’s College of Arts and Sciences, and the Master of Music from the Penn State School of Music, under Professor Mark Lusk. To propel his expertise in historical trombone performance, Ben David has sought further extensive mentoring from Greg Ingles, Artistic Director of the Dark Horse Consort, and Lecturer in Sackbut at Boston University.