Ben Allaway is one of Music that Makes Community’s founding composers and songleaders who were gathered to create a new repertoire of songs for “worship that would leave congregants free to move around, use their hands, and be fully present to one another in worship,” even in darkness with just a few candles and no musical score! Ten people wrote 45 songs in a week and taught them to each other– often without speaking– leading to the publishing of the book MUSIC BY HEART and a three-day conference to teach the techniques of “paperless” songleading. Music that Makes Community, Inc. has grown into a national movement transforming worship and building community in all manner of congregations, and the songlist has expanded to include the immense repertoire of oral traditions worldwide, songs which can be taught and sung “by heart.”

Ben’s music has been featured on programs with such diverse figures as Maya Angelou and Hal Holbrook, Garrison Keillor and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Simon Estes and Jean-Michel Cousteau, Jamie Bernstein and Odetta, Richie Havens and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Hillary Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Dr. Norman Borlaug and Northern Ireland's Mairead Maguire.

Raised in the broad cultural palette of California in a family involved in international education, Ben is renowned for his eclectic choral and congregational music with global/folk influences, often taking him into communities and countries with rich musical cultures. Projects in Kenya, Tanzania, Northern Ireland and Ireland, England, Germany, and throughout the United States have been impactful. He has also published numerous works in the classic western choral traditions. This intersection of classical and folk traditions is embodied in his concert-length dramatic oratorio HEAVEN & EARTH: Mass on the Celtic Journey, his fourth project with Iowa Public Television, and premiered in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Wales with Tommy Sands and The Chieftains' Kevin Conneff. CDs and DVDs available.

Works with African and Black American influences such as BANDARI: Inside These Walls, Freedom Come, From This House, and Alleluya Sasa! (He Is Born!), are considered major contributions to the cross-cultural choral repertoire. My Soul Is a River was written for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 75th birthday celebration at the United Nations, and the dramatic oratorio DADDY KING: MLK & Luther tells the story of Dr. King’s father.

In cross-cultural pieces, Ben prefers to write original songs influenced by other cultures as opposed to making arrangements of their existing songs. His music has been programmed by leading African-American conductors such as Dr. Anton Armstrong and the St. Olaf Choir, Roosevelt André Credit, Dr. Ollie Watts-Davis’ Black Chorus of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and Dr. Albert McNeil of the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, who toured Freedom Come from BANDARI to Japan, Taiwan and throughout the United States. Performances include the major halls and churches in America and around the world by the St. Olaf Choir, Concordia Choir, Harvard Men’s Glee Club, and the Symphonic Choir of Westminster Choir College, among many others. A graduate of both St. Olaf and Westminster, Ben’s piece, The Worlds Above, was featured in a St. Olaf composers section on the Centennial Celebration of The St. Olaf Choir, now available on DVD.

Ben has sung under Leonard Bernstein (New York Philharmonic), Kurt Masur (Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra), Ricardo Muti (Philadelphia Orchestra), Robert Shaw (Los Angeles Philharmonic) and many other leading conductors and their orchestras. He taught high school in Hannibal, MO and at Waldorf College in Iowa, where his choir was chosen for the National Convention of the American Choral Directors Association in 1991. 1993 saw his transition from full-time teaching to half-time church music and half-time filling commissions and publishing choral music. He was choirmaster at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Des Moines for five years, where he founded The Howells Scholars (still going strong) to sing monthly choral evensong. He then was choir director and composer-in-residence at First Christian Church, Des Moines for nineteen years, where he also developed the Thresholds Arts Festival to a Culture of Peace, an arts & issues community festival. He has also served Presbyterian, Lutheran, and United Methodist congregations, and for 23 years lead the High Holiday services at Temple B’nai Jeshurun and was tenor soloist.

Currently, Ben is writing the first full biography of Martin Luther King, Sr., the father of Dr. King, which is also being developed as a Broadway musical with Broadway artist Roosevelt André Credit. Ben lives in Des Moines, Iowa with his wife Julianne, who often collaborates with him on lyrics. Their four children are all living interesting lives in interesting places, and they enjoy visits with family, which include six grandchildren– so far!