Till is the Composer in Residence for Mosaic Voices, a British vocal ensemble specialising in music from the Jewish tradition based at New West End Synagogue in Bayswater, London.
This film won a Sandford St Martin Trustees Award In 2016, Till was commissioned by NMPAT (Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust) to compose a major orchestral and choral work about the River Nene,[2] which flows through his childhood home town of Higham Ferrers.
The piece quotes tradition folk melodies from towns and villages along the river, and explores ghost stories, myths and legends associated with the Nene.
Ten short films were created for each of the movements, and subsequently a live performance of the full piece was broadcast from Abney Park Cemetery.
The London Requiem was recorded in 2012 and featured the Balanescu Quartet and soloists including Maddy Prior, Matt Lucas, Tanita Tikaram and Barbara Windsor.
Benjamin Till's various compositions also include some liturgical Jewish works for a cappella male vocal ensemble, commissioned by Mosaic Voices, the resident choir at the New West End Synagogue, of which he is a member.
The show premiered in August 2014 at Leeds City Varieties Music Hall and tells the story of a group of men from a Leeds-based brass band who sign up to fight as part of the Leeds Pals battalion, and their women folk who decide to learn the instruments the men have left behind in the hope of playing triumphantly for them on their return from war.
Brass was later revived by the NYMT in a new production at the Hackney Empire in August 2016, directed by Hannah Chissick, and was met with rave reviews, especially from Theatre Critic and Associate Editor of The Stage, Mark Shenton, who said the show was a "magnificent miracle of a musical...with epic sweep and originality."
[8] Michael Arditti in the Sunday Express wrote "Benjamin Till's rich, melodious score, its influences, ranging from Marie Lloyd to Vaughan Williams, powerfully conveys the fervour, horror and heartbreak both in the trenches and at home".
[9] In 2017, Till wrote the musical Em, set in Liverpool in 1965, which tells the story of a woman who is trying to keep a baby born out of wedlock, which the authorities want to take away from her.
The half-hour film was produced by Endemol, and followed a lorry driver's journey up the A1, from London to Edinburgh, during which he met various people along the way; they all tell their stories, either in song or set to a specially composed soundtrack.
The film starts with Londoners singing their thoughts while stuck in city traffic, then further up the road a young Polish man is introduced: he is deliberating whether or not to leave England and return to Poland.
We then meet a woman who was involved in a severe car accident and the mysterious stranger who helped her, a choir of ex-miners lamenting the demise of the coal industry, a young man who lost his brother in an accident on the A1, two motorbikers railing at the government red tape that threatens to stifle people's independence and a Berwick-upon-Tweed resident who is campaigning to have the Scottish border redrawn to make his town part of Scotland, where he feels it rightly belongs.
The film was broadcast on 29 August 2008, and became the fourth most-praised programme aired on Channel 4 that month, based on telephone calls to the station to congratulate the makers.
Drawing on the whole community surrounding the market, and those who work in it or patronise it, the film spawned a large multi-platform project, with many radio hours dedicated to its creation, and the stories of some of those featured in it.
[14] The work celebrated 30 years of the Tyne and Wear Metro carrying the North-Eastern community from the busy epicentre of Monument to the sunny coast of Tynemouth, or the bustling runways of Newcastle Airport.