Fernando Benadon Professor Department of Performing Arts

Degrees: PhD, Music Composition, UC Berkeley

BM, Arranging, Berklee College of Music
Bio: I am a composer/theorist originally from Buenos Aires. I have released two albums, written a score for an indie feature film shown at Cannes, and been praised by The New York Times for my music’s “ear-grabbing invention.” As a scholar, I am mainly interested in rhythmic analysis and improvisation, especially in jazz and Afro-Cuban music. Musical life at AU is a blast. It’s collaborative and forward-thinking. Students and professors jam together and support each other’s projects. Bluegrass, hip-hop, Romanticism, jazz-rock, film music, the avant-garde — all and more find a home here.

See Also: Personal Website
For the Media: To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.; AU Experts

Teaching

Meter Isn't Everything: The Case of a Timeline-Oriented Cuban Polyrhythm. New Ideas in Psychology (2020)
Modern Drum Solos Over Ostinatos. In "Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Asian, African, and Euro-American Perspectives" (OUP, 2019).
Quantitative Analysis of Temporal Structure in Cuban Guaguancó Drumming. Music & Science (2018); co-authored with Andy McGraw & Michael Robinson
Near-Unisons in Afro-Cuban Ensemble Drumming. Empirical Musicology Review (2016).
More Rhythmic Interactions in Two (or Three) Aksak Performances. Empirical Musicology Review (2015)
A Corpus Analysis of Rubato in Bach's C Major Prelude. Music Performance Research (2015); co-authored with Damian Zanette
Metrical Perception of Trisyllabic Speech Rhythms. Psychological Research 78:1 (2014)
Time Warps in Early Jazz. Music Theory Spectrum 31:1 (2009)
Gridless Beats. Perspectives of New Music 47:1 (2009)
How Hooker Found His Boogie. Popular Music 28:1 (2009); co-authored with Ted Gioia
A Circular Plot for Rhythm Visualization and Analysis. Music Theory Online 13:3 (2007)
Slicing the Beat: Jazz Eighth-Notes as Expressive Microrhythm. Ethnomusicology 50:1 (2006)

On the Fluidity of Afro-Cuban Meter, Society for Music Theory (2019)
Polymetric Phrasing in Rumba's Quinto. Society for Music Theory (2016)
Improvisations of a Quinto Player. Analytical Approaches to World Music (2016); with Andrew McGraw
Deep Syncopation in Hindustani Tabla Drumming. Analytical Approaches to World Music (2014)
Disentangling the Rubato-Groove Continuum. Society for Music Theory (2012)
Dynamic Exploration of Recording Sessions Between Jazz Musicians Over Time. ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing (2012); with Darya Filippova, Karl Kingsford, and Michael Fitzgerald
Metrical Properties of Fusion Drum Solos. Society for Music Theory (2011)
Crossmodal Analogues of Tempo Rubato. Society for Music Perception and Cognition (2011)
Expressive Timing via Metric Hybrids. International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (2010)
Speech Rhythms and Metric Frames. Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music (2009)
Bend it Like Bubber: Miley's Time in Creole Love Call. Society for Music Theory (2007)
Towards a Theory of Tempo Modulation. International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (2004)
Absolutes and Relatives in Jazz Microtiming (poster). Auditory Perception, Cognition, and Action Meeting (2004)
Spectrographic and Calligraphic Cues in the Identification of Jazz Saxophonists. European Society for the Cognitive Sciences (2003)