When it comes to making music, associate professor Stephen O’Bent is about as versatile they come. An accomplished trombonist, he’s no slouch at several other instruments as well — the piano, guitar, ukulele, and accordion among them. On top of that, he has a master’s degree in choral conducting. Also, he juggles like a pro — literally.
He’ll probably enjoy just about any kind of musical project you throw his way, especially if it involves bringing people together. “I’m a genre-agnostic musician,” O’Bent says. “I love making music and I love making community, and that has taken a few different forms in my life.”
From indie rock duos and vaudeville quartets to more bands, orchestras, and vocal ensembles than you can count, O’Bent has lent his talent to a stunning array of performance groups over the years.
Around campus, O’Bent is best recognized as the faculty conductor for DigiPen’s two official choir groups — the DigiPen Dragon Chorus, open to all DigiPen students and staff, and the DigiPen Chamber Singers, an audition-based group for advanced student vocalists — both offered as a one-credit course through the Department of Music.
“We do concerts every semester, and we do outreach performances occasionally,” O’Bent says. “We’re going to go sing in a retirement home in a couple of weeks. We’re going to be singing the National Anthem at the Everett AquaSox [minor league baseball] game on Memorial Day this year. I’m pretty stoked about that.”
Additionally, O’Bent teaches a rotating schedule of courses within the BA in Music and Sound Design program, such as music theory, orchestration, and the history of Western classical music. As of this semester, he also threw another track into the mix. “Right now I’m teaching a new course for the first time, which is History of Video Game Music,” O’Bent says, describing the course as a mostly chronological survey of the technological and artistic advancements in game audio — starting with the arcade era and continuing all the way to modern consoles.
Despite his stellar musical credentials, O’Bent is quick to admit that on the gaming side of things, he was a bit of a novice when he first joined DigiPen as an adjunct instructor in 2016.
“By DigiPen standards I’m not a gamer,” O’Bent says with a smile. “I’m a casual gamer. I own a Switch. I play a lot of Mario games with my kindergartener son, and we play for fun. But I don’t get a lot of references my students make.”
That’s not to say he hasn’t enjoyed the opportunity to learn. Last January, for example, O’Bent made his second consecutive appearance at Super MAGFest in National Harbor, Maryland — an annual four-day celebration of video game music featuring panels, concerts, and near-endless game-playing opportunities. In addition to soaking in as many sights and sounds as he reasonably could, O’Bent was also invited to fill in as a last-minute substitute conductor for the MAGFest Community Orchestra as they performed a medley of tunes from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
“This year there were about 290 people signed up who ended up performing,” he says, referring to the all-volunteer orchestra, which comes together to present a concert each year based on just six hours of in-person rehearsal. “I got a little choked up at the concert. I was just like, ‘There are this many people that think this is worth their precious MAGFest time to come to these rehearsals and put this together!’ They just seemed so excited about it.”
It actually marked the second year in a row O’Bent got to lead the MAGFest orchestra. In 2024, at the invitation of his DigiPen colleague Lawrence Schwedler, O’Bent arranged and conducted a medley based on music from the 2006 game Metroid Prime Hunters, which Schwedler had originally composed.
Speaking of Schwedler collaborations, O’Bent was also eager to participate in the former Nintendo audio director’s all-star assemblage of DigiPen musicians for the scoring of the 2024 remake of Mario vs. Donkey Kong. As the trombonist on a number of key tracks, including the game’s main theme, O’Bent was able to land his first professional video game credit.
“That’s a game I play with my 5-year-old all the time, and every time we turn on the Switch and the title screen comes on is such a surreal and amazing feeling,” O’Bent says. “I think a lot about if I could play that moment to my 14-year-old self what that would feel like, to be like, ‘You’re going to be the trombone solo in an actual Nintendo game!’”
So how did this musical polymath come to find himself at DigiPen in the first place? Interestingly enough, O’Bent can recall a moment from his teenage years when he caught a brief glimpse of his future.
“One of the first musical arrangements I ever did was in high school, and it was arranging the Zelda main theme for the trombone section of my high school pep band. There was a competition between the sections of who could play something at a basketball game or something like that,” O’Bent recalls. “I remember being excited about it then. I don’t think I ever thought it would be part of my career.”
That’s partly because, at the time, O’Bent had his sights set on a very specific career goal — one that he actually managed to achieve. It all started at age 13 when O’Bent witnessed a performance by a long-running vaudeville troupe called the Flying Karamozov Brothers. Still active today, the group became famous for combining music and comedy with virtuoso juggling. So enthralled by what he had witnessed, a young O’Bent emailed the group, asking them what it would take for him to one day join their ranks.
“They actually emailed me back with this super-detailed specific list of things. They were like, ‘Watch every Marx Brothers movie. Read every Shakespeare play. Learn to juggle these different rhythmic patterns that we’re going to send you sheet music for. Play all the instruments you can. Learn to improvise. Sing in a choir. Learn different languages,’” O’Bent recalls. “And I did a shocking number of those things.”
When word got out years later that the group was looking for a new member, O’Bent was ready.
“One of the founding members of the group retired just about the time I was finishing up college, so I was able to audition and take over his spot,” he says.
My job is not necessarily to get them to go perform a Beethoven mass but more to find the music that makes them excited to be making music.
For the next eight years, O’Bent served as musical director and touring member of the Karamozov quartet, traveling to five continents and twice appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman as he took part in dexterous feats that could sometimes rival the absurdity of a Dr. Seuss book.
“We’d do a trick where we juggled a meat cleaver, and a fish, and a ukulele, and a block of dry ice, and a frying pan, and a flaming torch, and an egg — a bunch of dumb stuff,” O’Bent says. “I miss doing it a little bit, but also the touring all the time was starting to feel unsustainable as a lifestyle.”
Eventually, while living in New York and finding himself at a crossroads, O’Bent says he thought long and hard about what he ought to do next — having already achieved what had once been his life’s dream. For his next act, inspiration came in the form of a local community choir he’d been performing with.
“That was bringing me all kinds of joy, and I loved the people and the music and everything about the vibe,” O’Bent says. “I thought, ‘You know, I can do that. I’m a good musician and I get so much joy from finding what other people want to do and helping them do it better.’”
Returning to his home state, O’Bent enrolled in a master’s degree program for choral conducting at the University of Washington. It was toward the end of his program when he got a tip for a potential side gig.
“A friend of mine who had previously been the choir conductor at DigiPen mentioned that he was leaving town and they might be looking for a replacement. So I reached out,” he says. “Initially, that’s all my job was supposed to be. It was just conducting the choir. Then it trickled into a couple other courses.”
After a few years teaching as an adjunct, O’Bent finally joined as a full-time faculty in the fall of 2019, and he hasn’t looked back since.
“It took me a little while to get my bearings here and understand DigiPen’s culture better, in that my job is not necessarily to get them to go perform a Beethoven mass but more to find the music that makes them excited to be making music,” he says. “So I learned a lot about, ‘OK, we’re making arrangements of game music. We’re exploring some anime songs.’”
Of course, O’Bent also enjoys the opportunity to introduce classical genres into the curriculum as well, and he often finds ways of blending the old and the new in intriguing ways. Take, for example, this five-minute video performance in which the Dragon Chorus sings the famous Kirby song in the style of seven historical composers. O’Bent also proudly points to the choir’s 2024 themed concert, wherein the music consisted of various musical interpretations of the Orpheus and Eurydice Greek mythology.
“What clicked for me about that one is that I got to make them sing a baroque opera chorus, but we also got to sing a choir arrangement of music from the game Hades,” he says. “We got to pull from a bunch of different music genres around the same story, and students really latched onto that.”
Luckily, getting DigiPen students excited to create and perform is rarely difficult, and O’Bent enjoys the equally diverse range of musical backgrounds of the people he teaches.
“We have people who really came through heavy music education training and were in orchestra and played in musical pits and did marching band, and they’re super literate with their sheet music. And then we have people who have just explored on their own, messing around in a DAW,” O’Bent says. “One of the things I love about teaching here is that we’re stoked about both of those people and helping them pick up the skills that they might not have already gotten before they got to DigiPen.”
Although he may no longer be juggling flaming torches or blocks of dry ice, O’Bent’s hands remain as deft and active as ever. And for anyone who may not quite understand what being a conductor is all about, he also teaches a course on it.
“You’ve got to know the music really well so that you can show with your body what’s happening and queue the right people at the right time. A lot of it is like traffic management. It’s about making musical decisions and then helping them happen in real time,” he says. “You can verbally communicate ideas about vocal technique, but if you can show in your body and in your gesture what it feels like to take a supported breath, people will empathically do that with you. There’s some Jedi mind trick to it that I’m still exploring.”