MEQUON, Wis. - Dr. John A. Behnke, professor of music at Concordia University Wisconsin, was recently awarded a 2008 ASCAPLUS Composer Award by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. This is Behnke’s eleventh award by this organization.

The ASCAPLUS is a unique awards program that provides recognition and a cash award to many active writers in the early stages of their careers, as well as to established writers whose main activity is outside of broadcast media.

The award recognizes and encourages composers working in a genre whose performances are primarily in venues not surveyed; and/or writer members whose catalogs have a unique prestige value for which they would not otherwise be compensated.

Behnke, an internationally renown composer and organist, has three published CDs entitled, "For All Seasons, Volumes 1, 2 and 3," available from Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO and Northwestern Publishing House, Milwaukee, Wis.  He also has over 150 handbell, choral and organ compositions in print with seventeen different publishers in the United States, Germany and Taiwan.

At Concordia University Wisconsin, Behnke teaches organ and directs the nationally recognized The Alleluia Ringers, Concordia's touring handbell choir.

He also directs the Milwaukee Handbell Ensemble a group comprised of 14 adult ringers playing 133 bells and chimes from all around the Milwaukee metropolitan area and is the organist at the Historic Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in downtown Milwaukee where he plays on an 1878 Schuelke organ.

Behnke is a resident of Belgium, Wis.