Ben Bennett: Music for Idiophones and Rubbing Music
Published on September 29th, 2026Thursday, October 1st, 2026
Performance at 8 p.m.
In this performance, Ben Bennett explores a variety of complex timbres and rhythms produced by rubbing different types of polystyrene and wood against wet glass.
Ben Bennett is an American improvising percussionist and composer-performer of acoustic experimental music. His focus is on discovering idiosyncratic and emergent sound structures using objects that function as membranophones and idiophones. The reduction of sonic material to nothing led to the durational YouTube series “Sitting and Smiling” (2014-ongoing), and the application of iterative process to ordinary language led to Walking and Talking (2017-ongoing). His recent solo work, documented on “Music for Idiophones and Rubbing Music”, deals with dynamic stick-slip behaviour of commonplace planar materials such as steel, glass, plywood, cardboard, rubber, and polystyrene.
Video link:
https://youtu.be/pxRxUeYPKaE?is=CNWIAks-n9ZGA9M0
Audio link:
https://milmin.bandcamp.com/album/rubbing-music-for-wet-glass-extruded-polystyrene-and-latex

















