Ben Barahona Ginsberg
Composer, Music Director, Pianist, Arranger, Bookwriter, Lyricist
Ben Barahona Ginsberg is a Los Angeles-based pianist, composer, music director and educator. Many of his songs have been performed at the monthly Las Vegas Composers’ Showcase at the Smith Center. He has written music, book and/or lyrics for multiple original works, at both N.Y.U. Tisch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and the Academy for New Musicals, Inc. in North Hollywood, including Ramin (with Thalia Ranjbar), Minoru Scrapes the Sky (with Momo Akashi), View From the Moon (with Stacey Weingarten and Richard Holland), and Chessica’s Wayward Adventures (with Brian Morales). He was a songwriting fellow at the Johnny Mercer Foundation Songwriters Project in 2022. His original song “Heaven” premiered on American Idol Season 17 in March 2019.
Ben has worked with numerous theatre and opera companies, choral groups, schools and houses of worship across Southern California, Seattle and New York City, including Center Theatre Group (Amélie, Grey Gardens, Zoot Suit); The Wallis (Merrily We Roll Along, Frankenstein, Headless, For the Record: Scorsese); TheatreWorksUSA (El Otro Oz, Dot Dot Dot); 5-Star/Cabrillo (Damn Yankees, Evita, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Sister Act, Children of Eden, and this summer’s Frozen); Musical Theatre West (Jersey Boys), Musical Theatre Guild (The Drowsy Chaperone), Loyola Marymount University (Cabaret, Songs for a New World, Carrie); USC (Something Rotten! and Shaina Taub’s As You Like It); A Noise Within (A Man of No Importance); the Troubies (Duran DurANTONY and Cleopatra, Home Alone-ly Hearts Club Band); Interlochen Summer Arts Camp (The Wiz); Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (Sweeney Todd, Urinetown); Mayfield School Conservatory of the Arts’ Choral, Theatre (Six: Teen Edition) and Liturgy Programs; Beth Morrison and Danielle Birrittella Projects (Magdalene), St. Matthew’s Parish School (Willy Wonka, Shrek, Jr.), the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, St. Mary in Palms, the Esoterics, the Metropolitan Synagogue of N.Y.C., L.A. Symphonic Winds, Inner City Youth Orchestra of L.A., El Segundo Concert Band, and the Puget Sound, Moorpark and Santa Barbara Youth Symphony Orchestras. With the Santa Barbara Youth Ensemble Theatre he has music directed and performed twice for Oprah Winfrey. As a session keyboardist, he is the piano double for the film The Ringmaster, directed by Maya Albanese.
He earned his B.F.A. in Piano Performance from CalArts — where he gave the Wild Beast Music Pavilion concerto premiere with Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 — his M.A. (with distinction) in Music Industry Administration from C.S.U. Northridge, and his M.F.A. in Musical Theatre Composition from New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts.
Ben is also music director for this summer’s Ben’s Viking Trip (music, book and lyrics by Ben Boquist), also here at Hollywood Fringe (The Actors Company’s Let Live Theater, June 13-28).
