Music
Warren Benson
1924–2005 · composer, percussionist, teacher
Detroit-born composer and Cass Tech graduate who played timpani in the Detroit Symphony as a teenager and wrote the wind-band classic The Leaves Are Falling.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
aged 81- Birth name
- Warren Frank Benson
- Detroit years
- 1924–1940s
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Benson was born in Detroit in 1924 and graduated from Cass Technical High School. He was a working professional by fourteen, and while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan he played timpani in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under guest conductors such as Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Eugene Goossens and Leonard Bernstein. From 1950 to 1952 two Fulbright grants took him to Anatolia College in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he set up a bilingual music curriculum and the country's first coeducational school choir. At Ithaca College he founded in 1953 the first touring percussion ensemble in the eastern United States, and from 1967 to 1993 he taught composition at the Eastman School of Music. He wrote more than 100 works, above all song cycles and music for winds and percussion; The Leaves Are Falling, composed after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, became a staple of the band repertoire.
Highlights
- Cass Technical High School graduate
- Played timpani in the Detroit Symphony as a teenager
- The Leaves Are Falling (1964), a wind ensemble classic
- Professor of composition at the Eastman School, 1967–1993
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · about 1938–1942
Cass Technical High School (1922 building)
Demolished · 1922–2011
Benson graduated from Cass Tech, whose 1922 building was demolished in 2011.