George Benjamin

One of the outstanding composers of his generation * Studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Olivier Messiaen (composition) and Yvonne Loriod (piano), and at King's College Cambridge under Alexander Goehr * First orchestral work, Ringed by the Flat Horizon, was played at the BBC Proms when he was just 20 * Antara was commissioned by IRCAM to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Pompidou centre in 1987 * Conducted the first performances of Sudden Time at the first Meltdown Festival in 1993, and Three Inventions for Chamber Orchestra at the 75th Salzburg Festival in 1995 * The London Symphony Orchestra and Pierre Boulez gave the world premiere of Palimpsests in 2002 to mark the opening of the LSO's season-long retrospective of his work at the Barbican, "By George", a project which also included the premiere of Shadowlines by Pierre-Laurent Aimard * The centrepoint of a large-scale portrait at the 2006 Festival d'Automne in Paris was his first operatic work, Into the Little Hill, a collaboration with the English playwright Martin Crimp that will receive it’s US premiere at Lincoln Center Festival in Summer 2007 * Has a close relationship with the Tanglewood Festival in America since his first appearance there in 1999 * Regularly conducts with some of the world's leading ensembles and orchestras including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, the Cleveland and Concertgebouw orchestras and the Berlin Philharmonic * Current Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King‘s College, London * Awarded the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester's first ever Schoenberg Prize for composition (2001)

"A complete control of timbre - of sounds that seem to suggest colours, Turner-esque effects of light, and sensations of sultriness or of icy cold. His palette is extraordinary. The imaginative sounds are inseparable from an equally complete control of harmony." -- The New Yorker