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Dr. Frank Anthony Bencriscutto (1928-1997), was an internationally acclaimed and award-winning composer of instrumental and choral music. He held the position of Director of Bands and Professor of Music at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for thirty-two years. He earned his Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. At Eastman, he studied composition with Dr. Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers and played principal alto saxophone in the famed Eastman Wind Ensemble under Dr. Frederick Fennell.
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Besides his fame as a composer, Dr. Bencriscutto conducted all over the world, including a 1969 landmark 7-week, 10-city, 27-concert cultural exchange tour in the Soviet Union with his University of Minnesota Wind Orchestra. This cultural exchange was with the Bolshoi Ballet. The tour was so successful that it ended with a presidential command performance in the rose garden of the White House and resulted in Dr. Bencriscutto being invited by Dmitri Shostakovich and the Ministry of Culture to be an honored guest of the Soviet Union the following year at the 1970 International Tschaikovsky Competition. Another highlight occurred in 1980 when he conducted his University of Minnesota Wind Ensemble in a tour of mainland China as the first concert band to perform in the People's Republic of China.
Throughout Frank Bencriscutto's career as a conductor/composer, he continued to perform extensively (including Carnegie Hall concerts) as a soprano/alto saxophone and clarinet soloist with such jazz luminaries as Clark Terry, the late pianist Bill Evans (a close friend since their Fifth Army Band years), Urbie Green and many others.
For six semesters between 1991 and 1996, he enjoyed the position of Visiting Professor and conductor of the Wind Ensemble at the prestigious Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, Japan.
Dr. Bencriscutto was a founding member of Ars Nova Press, Inc.
Throughout Frank Bencriscutto's career as a conductor/composer, he continued to perform extensively (including Carnegie Hall concerts) as a soprano/alto saxophone and clarinet soloist with such jazz luminaries as Clark Terry, the late pianist Bill Evans (a close friend since their Fifth Army Band years), Urbie Green and many others.
For six semesters between 1991 and 1996, he enjoyed the position of Visiting Professor and conductor of the Wind Ensemble at the prestigious Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo, Japan.
Dr. Bencriscutto was a founding member of Ars Nova Press, Inc.