Benjie Messer is a musician based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is a composer, arranger, and music programmer for film, stage and live performance. A seasoned performer, Benjie has over 15 years of experience playing trombone and piano with a variety of bands and groups. He also has an extensive background in music education.

Benjie grew up in Eugene, Oregon. When he wasn’t playing trombone, euphonium and percussion in band, jazz groups, and orchestras, he acted in theater productions and spent hours playing the piano, improvising what his loving parents called “devil music.”

In 1995, Benjie moved to Amherst, Massachusetts to attend Hampshire College, where he studied classical and jazz music composition. While at Hampshire, Benjie co-founded Inner Orchestra, a jazz & funk band that performed throughout New England. In their seven years together, Inner Orchestra released two albums, secured grant funding to present a free educational concert series, and opened for such musical heavyweights as George Clinton & P-Funk, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Soulive, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, and Yusef Lateef.

Benjie earned his Master’s in Music Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2002, where he studied trombone with David Sporny. Upon completing his graduate studies, Benjie taught general music at Boston’s Learning Project Elementary School, maintained a roster of private students, and earned a full certification in Kodály Music Education from New England Conservatory. While in Boston, he performed at weddings with K2 and at Red Sox games with the Hot Tamale Brass Band.

Upon moving to Phoenix in 2007, Benjie began work at One Light Music Productions, a full-service music production company and the parent company of Productiontrax.com and Spiritrax.com. At OLM, Benjie creates custom karaoke versions of Broadway musicals, including the Stage Stars releases of The Little Mermaid, West Side Story, and South Pacific. He has also created over 100 original karaoke arrangements of religious songs, original music for a television special, and various pieces for licensing.

Benjie continues to play trombone with various bands at events and concerts in the Phoenix metro area, and is the founder of the Bad Cactus Brass Band. A prolific composer, Benjie realized a longtime dream by writing music for the 2009 feature-length independent comedy At Best Derivative, and has since written music for various short independent film projects.