George Benjamin

Born in 1960, George Benjamin began composing at the age of seven. When he was only 20 years old, Ringed by the Flat Horizon was played at the BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder. The London Sinfonietta, under Sir Simon Rattle, premiered At First Light two years later.  Benjamin’s first operatic work Into the Little Hill, written with playwright Martin Crimp, was commissioned in 2006 by the Festival d'Automne in Paris. Their second collaboration, Written on Skin, premiered at the Aix-en-Provence festival in July 2012 has since been scheduled by 20 international opera houses, winning as many international awards. The world premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence, a new opera with Martin Crimp, is scheduled for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 10 May 2018.
As a conductor Benjamin has a broad repertoire  - ranging from Mozart and Schumann to Knussen, Murail and Abrahamsen -  and has conducted numerous world premieres, including important works by Rihm, Chin, Grisey and Ligeti.  He regularly works with some of the world's leading orchestras, and over the years has developed particularly close relationships with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Sinfonietta and Ensemble Modern as well as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, who gave the world premiere of Dream of the Song under his baton in September 2015.
The last decade has seen multi-concert retrospectives in Paris, Lucerne, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Turin, Milan, Aldeburgh, Toronto, Dortmund and New York.