Benjamin began composing at the age of 10 and since 1996 has received over 40 commissions for the concert hall, cinema, ballet and theatre. He made his BBC Proms debut in 2006 conducting the world première of Escape Velocity; the fourth work composed under his ongoing tenure as Associate Composer of the Orchestra of St. John’s. He has also written for the BBC Singers, Bath International Festival of Music, Belcea Quartet, Goldberg Ensemble, Hallé Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the Rambert Dance Company and the Manchester Camerata, and his music has been performed at venues including the Barbican, Berlin Philharmonie, Sadler’s Wells, Bridgewater Hall, Cadogan Hall, Royal Opera House Linbury Theatre, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and Classic FM. His debut CD was released by Quartz in November 2006 to great critical acclaim and he signed an exclusive publishing agreement with Edition Peters in August 2006.
Benjamin’s has also composed two feature film scores (Thomas Vinterberg’s and Lars von Trier’s Dear Wendy and Rupert Wyatt’s The Escapist), both of which were nominated as ‘Discovery of the Year’ in the 2005 and 2008 World Soundtrack Awards respectively.
To date he has orchestrated and conducted seventeen major feature film scores including Dario Marianelli's Academy Award®, Golden Globe® and Ivor Novello Award- winning score for Atonement (also nominated for a BAFTA for Best Original Score 2008), his Academy Award® nominated score for Pride and Prejudice (Awarded Best Soundtrack in the 2006 Classical Brits and nominated as Best Original Score in the Ivor Novello Awards 2006), The Brave One, The Brothers Grimm, V for Vendetta, and Nigel Westlake's score for Miss Potter.
Benjamin Wallfisch’s conducting career was launched by his First Prize in the 2001 British Reserve Insurance Conducting Competition and by his prize-winning performance the following year in the Leeds Conductors’ Competition. At the age of 22, following studies with Vernon Handley, he was appointed Associate Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra and between 2003 and 2005 was Assistant Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. During this time he worked alongside some of the world’s greatest conductors including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Valery Gergiev, Edo de Waart and Leonard Slatkin, and frequently conducted the orchestra in venues including the Concertgebouw, De Doelen Rotterdam and the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Utrecht and in numerous studio recordings.
In the UK, Benjamin has conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia and City of London Sinfonia and has performed in venues such as the Barbican, Cadogan Hall, Royal Festival Hall and St. George’s Bristol. In 2005 he made his Australian debut conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in a series of critically acclaimed live broadcast Gala performances at the Sydney Opera House. Other guest conducting highlights have included the Bavarian Radio Philharmonic, Orchestre de Bretagne, Tivoli Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra and an appearance in the 2007 Mecklenburg Festival with the Weimar Staatskapelle.
Recent highlights include his second and third performances with the Hamburg Symphony, in their 75th anniversary subscription series in a programme featuring the world première of his new work commissioned by the orchestra The Torrent Leaves, Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante and Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and also conducting their annual Beethoven Ninth Symphony New Year concerts. He has recorded a disc of bassoon concerti with the Orchestra of Opera North for Chandos, and made his debuts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Future engagements include further collaborations with the Hamburg Symphony, as well as his debut performances with the Orchestra of the Norrlands Opera (Umea). He also returns to the Philharmonia Orchestra and will be the resident conductor at the 2009 Crested Butte Music Festival of Colorado.
Acclaimed by The Strad as “one of the finest accompanists anywhere on the podium”, Benjamin has performed concerti with some of the world's finest soloists in including Evelyn Glennie, Freddy Kempf, Dame Felicity Lott, Branford Marsalis, Igor Oistrakh, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and John Williams. Of Benjamin’s recent Quartz release of Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto with Ruth Palmer and the Philharmonia, Robert Matthew-Walker of International Record Review said “If I hear a greater record of Shostakovich’s music this year, I shall be astonished”.
Born in London in 1979 Benjamin was awarded the Master of Music degree with Distinction in composition from the Royal Academy of Music and is the first composer in the Academy’s history to be awarded the coveted Honorary Diploma of the Academy. Whilst at the Academy, Benjamin was the recipient of every composition prize including the Theodore Holland Intercollegiate Prize and the Performing Right Society Foundation Scholarship. He graduated from the Joint Course of the Royal Northern College of Music and the University of Manchester with First Class Honours and his composition teachers have included Anthony Gilbert, Michael Finnissy, James MacMillan and Robert Saxton.
MOVIESCORE MEDIA ALBUMS BY BENJAMIN WALLFISCH:
