George Benjamin (composer)

Sir George William John Benjamin, CBE (born 31 January 1960) is an English composer, conductor, pianist and teacher.

Benjamin's orchestral piece Ringed by the Flat Horizon (written for the Cambridge University Musical Society and premiered in Cambridge under the baton of Mark Elder on 5 March 1980) was performed at The Proms that August, while he was still a student, making him the then-youngest living composer to have had music performed at the Proms.

[6] Antara was commissioned by IRCAM for the 10th anniversary of the Pompidou Centre in 1987[7] and Three Inventions for chamber orchestra were written for the 75th Salzburg Festival in 1995.

[8] The London Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez premiered Palimpsests in 2002 to mark the opening of ‘By George’, a season-long portrait which included the first performance of Shadowlines by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

[9] More recent celebrations of Benjamin's work have taken place at Southbank Centre in 2012 (as part of the UK's Cultural Olympiad) and at the Barbican in 2016.

[13] Their fourth opera collaboration, Picture a Day like this,[14] was commissioned by and first produced at the Aix Festival at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in 2023; Benjamin conducted with Marianne Crebassa as the woman.

[37] Benjamin lives in northwest London with his partner, the filmmaker Michael Waldman, whose credits include The Day John Lennon Died, The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron, and the TV miniseries Musicality.