First Place winner
North Carolina School of the Arts

Ben Robinette is currently in his second year of graduate studies in Saxophone Performance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where he serves as the teaching assistant to Professor Taimur Sullivan. He began his studies in 1999 with Dr. Timothy Roberts, principal saxophonist of the United States Navy Band, and continued his studies at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville under Dr. Connie Frigo. He graduated from UT in 2009 with a Bachelor of Music in Saxophone Performance.

At The University of Tennessee, he twice won the university’s concerto competition, received the School of Music's award for woodwind performance excellence three times in a row, and was awarded several outside performance scholarships. Cultivating performer/composer relationships at UT also resulted in a large-scale soprano saxophone concerto being written for him by one of the school’s most talented student composers. Robinette was also a founding member and the soprano saxophonist of the award-winning (and locally popular!) Four-T-Tude Saxophone Quartet, which represented the UT School of Music as one of their ambassadorial chamber ensembles. His performance interests varied widely during his last two years in Knoxville, with performances of Romanian brass band music and transcriptions of late Romantic and early 20th century clarinet music weaving their way into his repertory.

In January of 2009, Robinette auditioned for the United States Navy Band, and was selected as one of six national finalists. His final performance at UT involved collaboration with the dance department in a new work for dancers, solo saxophone, and boombox. At UNCSA he has established a strong chamber music presence, collaborating with his peers to form a saxophone quartet while also making use of a long-standing love of the music of English composer Sir Arnold Bax to start a regularly performing trio of saxophone, violin, and piano—the Bax Trio. During his first year at UNCSA, Robinette also won the North Carolina state division of the MTNA Young Artists’ solo competition as well as the UNCSA Concerto Competition. With a particular interest in the art of the transcription, he has adapted several works for saxophone that were originally written for violin, clarinet, viola, oboe, and other instruments. Other recent undertakings of his include a joint recital program with Connie Frigo and former UT colleagues highlighting antiphonal arrangements of Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis's popular “boombox” music for saxophones, and study of the Zimbabwean matepe mbira courtesy of an instrument made for him by Chaka Chawasarira.