CBE for Professor of Composition

CBE for Professor of Composition

18 Jun 2010, PR 138/10

George Benjamin, Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King’s College London, has received a CBE (Order of the British Empire: Commander) in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to music. Tonight he will conduct his first opera Into the Little Hill at the Aldeburgh Festival where he is this year’s featured contemporary composer.

One of the outstanding composers of his generation, George Benjamin succeeded Sir Harrison Birtwistle as Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King’s in January 2001 since when he has accepted postgraduate students from the UK, Japan, France, Spain, Italy, Jordan, USA, Israel, Portugal, Germany and Australia.

Professor Benjamin is this year’s featured contemporary composer at the annual Aldeburgh Festival (11–27 June). Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Festival’s artistic director, says it was ‘very easy to decide’ to give Professor Benjamin star billing: he finds his music deeply and essentially felt, thought and conceived.

Since his first orchestral piece, Ringed by the Flat Horizon, was performed at the BBC Proms in 1980 his works have continued to be performed across the world. In recent years there have been major retrospectives of his work in Tanglewood, London, Brussels, Tokyo, Berlin, Strasbourg, Madrid and Paris.

In 2009 his first opera Into the Little Hill, received its UK premiere in a new production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in a double-bill with Harrison Birtwistle’s Down By the Greenwood Side.

As a conductor Professor Benjamin regularly appears with some of the world’s leading ensembles and orchestras, amongst them the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, the Cleveland and Concertgebouw orchestras and the Berlin Philharmonic. In August 2008 he conducted the BBC Proms at the Albert Hall conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra in five pieces including one of his own works Ringed by the Flat Horizon.

Tom Service of The Guardian described Professor Benjamin as one of Britain’s most successful contemporary music exports, whose orchestral pieces, chamber works, and finely wrought vocal settings are played by orchestras and ensembles worldwide.