Dr. Benjamin (Ben) Zeff is a multi-instrumentalist, performer, composer, and music educator based in Columbus, Ohio, with over 35 years of performance experience and over 25 years of teaching experience.
Growing up in Sacramento, CA, Ben began playing the guitar in the Summer of 1991. Bands and artists such as Metallica, Pantera, Guns and Roses, AC/DC, Anthrax, Beastie Boys, Living Colour, and Joe Satriani were his main inspirations and created the drive behind his technical playing style. This love of technically driven, guitar-centric music led to Ben’s discovery of Jazz-Rock Fusion and artists such as Allan Holdsworth, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale, Mike Stern, and Robben Ford. This newfound love of jazz and jazz improvisation shaped the next twenty years of Ben’s musical studies and career.
After earning his B.A. in Jazz Studies from Sonoma State University and gigging extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the greater part of Northern California, Ben moved to New Jersey to attend William Paterson University. Upon earning his Masters of Music in 2005, Ben moved to Brooklyn, NY, where he resided for the next ten years, gigging and teaching. In 2016, Ben attended and taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his Doctor of Musical Art in 2019.
Ben has toured both the United States and Europe, playing at the Montreux and North Sea jazz festivals as well as other notable venues and events around the states and abroad. He has performed and recorded with jazz legends Randy Brecker, Cyrus Chestnut, local legend Vaughn Wiester, as well as The Texas Horns, The Drifter Kings, and Kirk Covington’s Devil Horns.
Ben’s love, appreciation, and dedication to music is expansive and indiscriminate, drawing influence from metal, hard rock, classic rock, blues, bluegrass, jazz, classical, pop, R&B, hip hop, and electronica. He believes that no matter what your skill level, everyone can have a relationship with music because music is one of the most powerful forms of communicating emotion, energy, and feeling in the world and is one of the most significant achievements in all human history.