Ben Schmidt-Swartz

Ben is a Chicago born saxophonist, composer and educator, living and working in Chicago and Northwest Indiana. Ben holds both a Bachelors, and Masters in music from Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where he also taught, and will be teaching in the fall of 2026. He is now teaching and freelancing throughout Chicago, performing with some of Chicago’s finest improvisers including Peter Maunu, Avreeyal Ra, Bill Harris, Vincent Davis, Jim Baker, Ed Wilkerson, and Preyas Roy just to name a few. His main interest is playing music of great expressive, creative, unifying and spiritual power, and loves to straddle the line between absolute freedom of expression, and stoic traditionalism.