Ben Richter is an experimental composer, accordionist, and director of Ghost Ensemble. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, Richter’s compositions orient toward new orders of magnitude in musical parameters to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales we do not experience in everyday life, marking humanity’s transient yet vital role within the immensity of geologic time. As the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Ghost Ensemble, Ben also creates innovative new work with a diverse host of experimental performer-composers. The ensemble’s debut LP We Who Walk Again features music by Pauline Oliveros and Sky Macklay alongside Ben’s Wind People, described as “a multifaceted texture that evokes the primeval” (Meg Wilhoite) and “cloudy, mysterious, and dark ... Beckettian in its slow spread” (Brian Olewnick). As a solo performer, Ben explores the extended microtonal and timbral potential of the accordion; immersive just-intonation accordion work Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean was hailed by Stephen Smoliar as “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening.” A student of Pauline Oliveros and teacher of Deep Listening, Ben Richter holds a DMA from CalArts and serves as music/sound curator of UMass-Amherst’s Futuring Lab.