Benton Schmidt is a multi-faceted church musician and teacher currently serving at St. Paul's Newman Center in Fargo, ND, where he directs all aspects of liturgical music. Benton was homeschooled from first grade through high school graduation. He earned his first bachelor's degree in business through distance learning and alternative college online learning formats. He completed his Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance at North Dakota State University, where he developed his enthusiasm for choirs and early music, inspired by yearly performances of Handel’s Messiah each Christmas. He earned his Masters of Sacred Music at the University of Notre Dame, where he became especially interested in early German organ repertoire by Heinrich Scheidemann and Matthias Weckmann. Schmidt is in the process of finishing his doctoral degree in church music at the University of Kansas, where his focus includes both modern and French Classic repertoire. His academic interests include the classical Solesmes method of Gregorian chant as taught by Dom André Mocquereau and the tradition of organ alternatim in the Latin liturgy. Recently, his travels have taken him to give recitals at Marquette University, St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, D. C., and Cosenza, Italy. Outside of music, Benton is an ardent Anglophile who enjoys the mystery novels of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie, the fantasy literature of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, and dabbling in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.