The February before they started their freshman year, Ben Norton, ’16BS, and Anna Delgado-Norton, ’16BS, MT-BC, first met at the Molloy scholarship dinner, having no idea that in seven years they would form a band that would bring interactive concerts to thousands of kids across the nation. They certainly had no idea that in a dozen years, they’d release two EP’s and launch their first national tour. And since they hadn’t even started their degrees in music therapy, they couldn’t possibly have known that they would love their future music careers and feel that they owed it all to Molloy.
This September the BenAnna Band celebrated their 7th anniversary. The band is unique because they literally bring musical instruments to each concert for the audience to play, so every performance is a collaboration between audience and band. In this way, no two performances are the same. They also tailor each event to the facility's preferences or chosen theme and host an "instrument petting zoo" section where kids can come give the tambourine a high five with Anna or play a song with Ben on his guitar. Additionally, these concerts are not "sit down and listen" concerts; they encourage the kids to talk back, sing along, play along, and dance.
According to Anna, “Our music has changed a lot over the last seven years. We started playing mostly covers of other children's artists, with only a handful of our own songs, and now we've released two EPs, several singles, and a full-length album of original music, with another album ready to be recorded. The ideology is the thing that's stayed the same: we want to create an inclusive space for kiddos of all ages, abilities, and identities to participate in a musical experience with us and their caretakers. We primarily provide in-person interactive concerts through library systems all over the nation, and that's really our bread and butter. We're meeting anywhere from 20 to 500 kiddos with their caretakers and building a group musical experience (the main mission stated in the opening song is "we're all in the band"). We're always hopeful to see these families again, and so grateful when we get to, but the point is to collectively create and share in one big musical moment, unique to right then and there. We also offer monthly music sessions with local daycare systems, preschools and other early childhood facilities, which is more akin to our formal music therapy training. For those classes, we see the same kiddos in a school setting from September through May. We're able to see their individual growth in the group music time, celebrate their wins, and continue to reinforce social, educational, and emotional goals through the music making. We are quite literally living the dream! Our dream at least.”
In addition to Ben and Anna meeting at Molloy, the band has its roots in Molloy as well. Ben elaborated, “Not to sound corny or hyperbolic, but genuinely, the music therapy education and experience we received at Molloy has been EVERYTHING when it comes to this whole gig. Each step in the process of making music with kiddos and their families is informed by the methodologies, techniques, interventions, resources, and overall worldview our teachers passed down. It was absolutely an A-to-B, straight shot down the highway for us; our entire bedrock as professionals, performers, and people is based on the philosophy and goal-based approach to music that music therapy provides, and that was taught to us at Molloy by the brilliant, compassionate, dedicated, and VERY patient professors and teaching staff of the music department. We both might have been a handful (to say the least) during our time as students but we really want those professors and the whole world to know that every step taken, decision made, and song sung since graduation has been a direct result of the education we were lucky enough to receive. That extends not only to clinicianship, but also to countless and invaluable lessons in empathy, growth, and humanity.”
The name BenAnna came about because the two were so close at Molloy that they were called “BenAnna” by classmates. “I also used to get called Anna Banana,” Anna explained. “In the years between college and forming the band, we had always joked that we should start some project together just to call it "BenAnna," and when we started really making music together, "BenAnna Baaaand" just kind of rolled off the tongue. Our first time formally playing together was for a birthday party that Ben originally got hired to play at, and he'd asked if I would sing with him. I was walking around Old Navy the week before that party and found a matching banana printed dress and shirt, so I got it for us and I think suiting up made it real—we were BenAnna Band!”
This summer the BenAnna Band completed their 7th national tour. They traveled to 14 different states with over 65 different programs. Anna said, “A highlight for me is that, from a work stand point, I feel the most confident I ever have in the job, in the concert and music we provide. We usually fine tune our summer set during May and then play the same set for the next three months, connecting it to the national Summer Reading Program theme. Most of the libraries this year had an "Unearth a Story" theme, based around all things dinosaur related. We had almost zero dinosaur songs going into this summer, so three weeks before our first summer show, Ben created the silliest and punniest dinosaur prompted dance song. It’s so wordy that I can't sing along with the chorus yet, and I've heard it multiple times a day for three months. I remember driving out east for one of our last Long Island daycare classes before tour, and mentioning to him that he really needed to write a dinosaur song, then he did it right there! Literally right next to me, in about 20 minutes, he created the climax of our summer set. It was phenomenal to watch happen live!”
For Ben a major highlight of their most recent tour was sharing in the kids’ excitement about something as widely loved as dinosaurs and hearing just how much the kids know about them. He added, “That's always the coolest part of the gig, getting to see kids and their families feel free to express themselves and bring something only they can provide to each song and each show. Whether it's sharing dinosaur facts, teaching the prompts of a particular song to a little sibling, or just debuting a never-before-seen dance move, the ways that kids (and grown-ups) make the music their own are truly magic, and those small moments are what make each show distinctive and memorable. That's consistently a highlight of not only touring, but of this weird, wonderful job, and I'm sure anyone who works with kids would agree. At the risk of sounding cheesy once again, my very favorite part of touring is getting to work with local libraries and community programs of all these different regions, gaining a small sense of what that specific community holds dear and being welcomed into play with the community at large.”
In terms of Molloy’s lasting influence—Anna concluded: “The choice to come to Molloy has quite literally changed my life. Without Molloy, first and foremost, I would have never met Ben. I also would never have become this version of myself. Molloy offered me opportunities for personal growth and leadership, and of course an education that continues to inform the small business we've created together. ‘Raise the praise, increase the peace, silence the violence, minimize the criticize’ is still such a core value for me, learned from the great Sister Diane!”
