Melody Turnquist-Steed recently returned to her home state of Iowa to serve as a Music Specialist in the Waterloo Community School District. Until January 2017, she served as Associate Professor of Music and Assistant Academic Dean at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, where she was the director of the Bethany College Core Experience and the Bethany College Handbell Ensemble in addition to her duties as College Organist. In 2013 she was honored for her service to the College as a recipient of the Mortvedt Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership. Prior to her appointment at Bethany College, she served as organist at the prestigious Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
Dr. Steed received degrees in Organ Performance from the University of Northern Iowa, University of Cincinnati, and the University of Southern California. She has studied organ with Marilou Kratzenstein, Jesse Eschbach, Roberta Gary, and Cherry Rhodes. An active recitalist, she has toured Romania as an organ soloist and has performed at regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the International Trumpet Guild with trumpeter Keith Benjamin. Their trumpet/organ duo, Clarion, has recorded three compact discs: Clarion, New Music for Trumpet and Organ (1994), New Vintage (2001), and Ripples (2019). They have concertized throughout the United States and Hungary, and have been featured on the National Public Radio program, Pipe Dreams!
Keith Benjamin has been teaching at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory since 1989 and was designated as a Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the Conservatory in 2017.
His current orchestral work includes guest trumpet performances with the Sioux City Symphony, Orchestra Iowa and other regional orchestras, and extra trumpet for the Kansas City Symphony, Kansas City Ballet, and Lyric Opera of Kansas City. His recitals emphasize contemporary music, with commissions and premieres including compositions of Samuel Adler, Stacy Garrop, James Mobberley, Tony Plog, Adam Schoenberg, and many others. Recital and concert appearances in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Dallas, and more than 35 states are “traveling” highlights, and Kansas City also affords him the opportunity to have a lively professional career as a commercial, studio, and lead trumpet player; recent performances have been with Hugh Jackman, Byron Stripling, Ben Folds, Peter Gabriel, Idina Menzel, and Matthew Morrison.
Dr. Benjamin is partnered with organist Melody Steed in Clarion, a trumpet and organ duo that emphasizes new music. The duo has released three CD recordings with Gothic and Crystal Records; the second and third recordings, Clarion: New Vintage, and Ripples, are each comprised of five new American works commissioned by the duo. Clarion has performed across the United States and toured Hungary and are scheduling a concert tour in England and Scotland in 2023.
“…Clarion, who reveal here not just an extraordinarily high level of technical ability but a keen sense of the dramatic gesture…clearly the unique qualities of both Benjamin and Turnquist-Steed have inspired some very original writing, and they respond with performances which are nothing if not totally committed to the music.”
MusicWeb International, 2020: