Tim Benjamin is a composer well known for his work (also as a director) in opera, most recently The Fire of Olympus; or, On Sticking It to the Man – which was also made into a feature film. He is a director for stage and screen, and as a writer has created a number of librettos, scripts, adaptations, short stories, and other texts.
Away from the theatre stage, his recent large-scale orchestral works include a symphony composed for the Enescu Festival, conducted by Rumon Gamba, and which was ecstatically received by audiences at the festival and broadcast across Europe, and a piano concerto composed for Peter Jablonski. His large-scale works include the oratorio Herakles and he is also a prolific composer of chamber music.
Tim Benjamin won the BBC Young Musician of the Year Composer’s Award in 1993, at the age of 17, with his work Antagony, scored for two large wind bands, amplified strings, and six percussionists, performed by the London Sinfonietta under Martyn Brabbins and broadcast on national radio and TV. He also won the Stephen Oliver Trust’s Prize for Contemporary Opera in 1996, for his first opera The Bridge, which has been produced twice, in Manchester at ISCM World Music Days and in London at the Covent Garden Festival.
He is a regular writer and speaker on music and related subjects, appearing at TEDx in 2015. He serves on the jury of the George Enescu International Competition and is the artistic director of Radius Opera. He also plays trombone, piano, organ, violin, and viola.
Tim Benjamin studied composition with Anthony Gilbert at the Royal Northern College of Music, privately with Steve Martland (in whose memory he created and funds the Steve Martland Scholarship), and with Robert Saxton at Oxford University where he received a doctorate (his thesis was Economics of New Music).
