After living in Vermont and attending college at St. John's in Maryland, playing with the fine Irish musicians in Baltimore, he moved to Dublin in the mid-nineties for the tunes. He studied there with the great Irish flute player, Paul McGrattan, and subsequently moved West to complete an M.A. in Traditional Irish Music at Limerick University’s renownedIrish World Music Centre. There he worked with Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, the celebrated Irish composer, and Niall Keegan and Desi Wilkinson, the well known Irish flute players, among many others. It was there also that he was introduced to sean-nós dance at Tráth na gCos and Blas, the centre’s annual traditional dance festival and its summer school, going on to study sean-nós and traditional dance with Róisín Ní Mhainín, James Keane and Dr. Catherine Foley. Ben has played and danced with Mick Moloney, Solas, the Cathie Ryan Band, Susan McKeown and Kieran Jordan, among others. He has recorded a CD, the Mouse in the Mug, twice been principle dance teacher at the Sean-Nós Northwestfestival in Portland, Oregon and, with the Pride of Erin Ceili Dancers, won consecutive grants from theAlliance for California Traditional Arts to teach sean-nós dance in Southern California. He currently lives in La Jolla, California, while pursuing a Ph.D. inIntegrative Studies in Music (ethnomusicology) at the University of California, San Diego, from where he researches the bellows pipes revival in Scotland. He currently plays with the Gallowglass Collective.