George Benjamin was born in 1960 and began composing at the age of seven. He initially studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Messiaen, and later with Alexander Goehr at King's College, Cambridge. When Benjamin was only 20 years old, Ringed by the Flat Horizon was played at the BBC Proms by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Mark Elder. The London Sinfonietta under Simon Rattle, premiered At First Light two years later. Pierre Boulez and the London Symphony Orchestra premiered Palimpsests in 2002 to mark the opening of ‘By George’, a season-long portrait. Recent seasons have seen major surveys of Benjamin’s work given by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Composer Festival at Konzerthaus Stockholm and Radio France’s Festival Présences.
Benjamin conducted the world premiere of Picture a day like this at the Aix-en-Provence opera festival in July 2023, to great cricital acclaim. As with his previous three operatic scores, the text was written by playwright Martin Crimp. Into the Little Hill, was commissioned by the 2006 Festival d'Automne in Paris. Written on Skin (Aix, 2012) and Lessons in Love and Violence (Royal Opera House, 2018). These works have received dozens of productions in opera houses across the world.
In June 2025 Benjamin performed the world premiere of his new work for piano four hands, Divisions, at the Boulez Saal in Berlin with his great friend Pierre-Laurent Aimard. During the 2025/26 season they will repeat the work at the Wigmore Hall in London, Washington DC and New York. They will also collaborate in Munich at a Musica Viva concert with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in December. In spring 2026 he will conduct the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie on tour in both Italy and Germany. At the Southbank Centre in London he has performances with both the London Sinfonietta and London Philharmonic, the latter being a highlight of his first season as the orchestra’s new Composer-in-Residence.
Over many years Benjamin has developed a particularly close association with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, who played under his baton for the premiere performances of his Concerto for Orchestra at the 2021 BBC Proms as well as Written on Skin and Picture a day like this. Benjamin also has strong relationships with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Ensemble Modern going back decades. As a conductor Benjamin has a broad repertoire and has been responsible for numerous premieres, including important works by Rihm, Chin, Murail, Grisey and Ligeti.
Since 2001 Benjamin has been the Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King‘s College London. His works are published by Faber Music and are recorded on Nimbus Records. He has received numerous honorary fellowships and international awards, was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2015 and was knighted in the 2017 Birthday Honours. In 2019 he was given the Golden Lion Award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale, and he received the Grand Prix artistique from the Simone et Cino Del Duca Foundation at the Institut de France in 2022. Most recently Benjamin has been made the 50th laureate of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award from the BBVA Foundation in Bilbao in June 2024.