William Banfield

Biographical Information

Introduction:

William (Bill) Banfield has been called “one of the last grand Renaissance men in our time.” He is a theologian, musician, professor, composer, conductor, and author. The many roles that Banfield has assumed throughout his career might seem different from one another. However, they are all connected by his unique vision as an artist. As a composer, Banfield has written hundreds of orchestral works, chamber works, and jazz songs. But his distinctive style shines through in much of his music. In one review, Downbeat Magazine described his musical style, saying, “Banfield swings between music genres... he doesn’t choose one camp over the other… his works run the kind of gamble that baffles record company executives.” Banfield’s genre-bending style has been well-received all across the country. His symphonies and operas have been performed by orchestras in Detroit, Atlanta, Akron, San Diego, and Washington D.C to name a few. His compositions and his own performances have been recorded on famous labels like CollinsClassics, and Albany/Visionary Recordings. And he has also founded organizations like the Jazz Urbane Collective that elevate local talent and music that is “urbane, hip, and non-categorical.” Banfield has also had a successful career as a professor and author. He has taught and lectured at universities all over the United States, and he served as the director and founder of the Africana Studies department at the Berkee School of Music. He has also written many critically-acclaimed books, two of which have become important tools for the general public to learn about the achievements of Black composers, both living and historic.

Early Life:

William (Bill) Banfield was born in Detroit in a Black, religious family. His parents were active churchgoers at Detroit’s Second Baptist Church. And his father was a deacon who oversaw the church’s Sunday school. Banfield’s christianity was a very important part of his childhood, and it would come to play a crucial role in his future career. When he was much older, he would say, “The arts have this social-political-spiritual embodiment to it. People come to it like a ritual, like a church. So, there’s the arts-church idea.”

The young Banfield would start taking guitar lessons when he was 9 years old, and he would start playing with bands when he was 12 years old. His formative musical years were defined by the thriving musical scene in Detroit at the time. Back then, the Detroit-based Motown Records was one of the largest recording labels in the United States. The company was founded by Berry Gordy Jr., a Black man who had recently left Atlanta and moved to Detroit. During the first half of the twentieth century, many Black Americans who had previously lived in the South started moving to Northern cities as part of the “Great Migration.” Many were seeking better job opportunities in industrial Northern cities, and others were fleeing violence and discriminatory Jim Crow laws in the South. Berry Gordy’s Motown Recording Company aimed to create a type of music with mass appeal. They hoped to do this by combining rhythm-and-blues, gospel, pop music, and even rock n’ roll. Motown would go on to make the careers of superstar musicians like Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, and the Jackson 5. And all of this was occurring in Detroit. Banfield grew up in this thriving music environment. He went to the Cass Technical High School, a school that many Motown greats would graduate from. Regina Carter, Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, and Diana Ross all went to the same school that William Banfield graduated from. And Earl Klugh, another future guitarist and composer, was one of Banfield’s best friends during his teenage years.

Career:

Once high school was over, Bill Banfield moved to Boston to pursue a bachelors of music at the New England Conservatory. After graduation, he would go to Boston University (BU) where he would pursue a masters in Theology. He was especially interested in BU, due to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr’s time at the very same school. However, Banfield didn’t consider his theology degree to be a departure from his musical studies. Instead, he saw his religious studies as being an important part of his musical studies. He said, “One of the things I wanted to go to theology school for was that it would train me and give me the tools to be able to understand how to navigate my faith and my art.” While at BU, Banfield would continue to work on his recording label, BMagic Operations. He kept playing with his quartet, and he cofounded a music school called Young Artists Development, Inc. However, Banfield would eventually move to Michigan to study musical composition at the University of Michigan. Once he attained his Doctorate of Musical Arts, he accepted his first academic position as a professor at Indiana University. During his college years, Banfield had done many different things, and his post-college career would be no different.

Today, William (Bill) Banfield is a distinguished composer with 13 symphonies, 8 operas, 7 concerti, and hundreds of other works. His operas and symphonies have been performed, commissioned, and recorded by the National, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas, Akron, Detroit, New York Virtuoso, Grand Rapids, Akron, Richmond, Toledo, Savannah, Chicago Symphonia, Indianapolis, Sphinx, Sacramento, San Diego symphonies and the Havana Camerata of Cuba. He has won awards and grants from prestigious organizations like the National Endowment of the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Lila Wallace Foundation. And he has been an adjudicator for the Pulitzer Prize 3 times. Banfield is still an active performer, and he often plays with his Banfield Trio. He usually performs jazz and fusion, but he is still a jack of all trades. He is the current director of Jazz Urbane and he continues to be the leader of the BMagic Orchestra. And currently, Banfield is working on an exciting new project called the Jazz Urbane Cafe. His idea is to create a restaurant performance space that furthers the musical goals of Jazz Urbane while elevating local talent in Boston. Banfield has had a storied career as a professor and department head at Berklee, but he has also had a well-regarded career as an author. Two of his most well-known books are The Black Composer Speaks, and Musical Landscapes in Color. Both books trace the lives and careers of talented Black individuals and historic Black composers that have been overlooked in the past and the current day.

Resources:

Collins, Michael, and Bill Banfield. “On the Phone with Composer Bill Banfield: An Interview.”

Callaloo, vol. 28, no. 3, 2005, pp. 635–42. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3805752.

Accessed 3 May 2024.

History-makers Bio:

https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/william-banfield

Berklee Website:

https://college.berklee.edu/people/william-c-banfield

Bill Banfield, Website Biography:

http://www.billbanfieldmusic.com/bill-b

New Music USA, Interview:

https://newmusicusa.org/nmbx/in-conversation-with-william-c-banfield/