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Sir George Benjamin CBE
Composer-in-Residence
Sir George Benjamin became the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Composer-in-Residence in September 2025.
The LPO’s 2025/26 season launched on 27 September 2025 with a performance of Benjamin’s orchestral work Ringed by the Flat Horizon – opening a concert that also included Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto with soloist Yefim Bronfman and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.
On 11 February 2026 Benjamin conducts a concert which includes his own orchestral work Palimpsests – music inspired by tales written on medieval manuscripts – framed by Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy, Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Ravel’s Mother Goose.
As LPO Composer-in-Residence, Benjamin will also serve as mentor to the five participants selected each year for the LPO Young Composers programme, which aims to support the progression of talented orchestral composers.
About George Benjamin
Benjamin is one of the leading figures in contemporary classical music. Born in 1960, he studied with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire and with Alexander Goehr at King’s College, Cambridge. His early work Ringed by the Flat Horizon was performed at the 1980 BBC Proms when he was just 20, marking the start of a remarkable career. His works have been performed by notable conductors and orchestras worldwide, and his groundbreaking opera collaborations with playwright Martin Crimp have created the modern classics Into the Little Hill, Written on Skin, and Lessons in Love and Violence. His most recent opera, Picture a day like this, was premiered at the 2023 Aix-en-Provence Festival, and its Nimbus Records recording by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the composer’s baton was winner of the Contemporary Award at the 2025 Gramophone Awards.
As a conductor, Benjamin has a broad repertoire, and has been responsible for numerous premieres including significant works by Wolfgang Rihm, Unsuk Chin, Tristan Murail, Gérard Grisey and György Ligeti. The Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King’s College London since 2001, he has received numerous international awards, including a knighthood in 2017 and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2023.