Benjamin was born in London and attended
Westminster School. He studied piano privately with concert pianist and eminent teacher, Marguerite Tury in 1967–74, wrote his first composition at the age of nine, and took piano and composition lessons with
Peter Gellhorn until the age of 15,[2] after which Gellhorn arranged for Benjamin to continue his lessons in Paris with
Olivier Messiaen, whom he had known for many years.[3] Messiaen was reported to have described Benjamin as his favourite pupil.[4] He then read music at
King's College, Cambridge, studying under
Alexander Goehr and
Robin Holloway.
His orchestral piece Ringed by the Flat Horizon (written for the
Cambridge University Musical Society and premiered in
Cambridge under the baton of
Mark Elder on 5 March 1980) was performed at
The Proms that August, while he was still a student, making him the youngest living composer to have had music performed at the Proms.[5] The
London Sinfonietta and
Sir Simon Rattle premiered At First Light two years later.[6]Antara was commissioned by
IRCAM for the 10th anniversary of the Pompidou Centre in 1987[7] and Three Inventions for chamber orchestra were written for the 75th
Salzburg Festival in 1995.[8] The
London Symphony Orchestra under
Pierre Boulez premiered Palimpsests in 2002 to mark the opening of ‘By George’, a season-long portrait which included the first performance of Shadowlines by
Pierre-Laurent Aimard.[9] More recent celebrations of Benjamin's work have taken place at
Southbank Centre in 2012 (as part of the UK's Cultural Olympiad) and at the Barbican in 2016.[10][11]
Benjamin's first operatic work Into the Little Hill, written with playwright
Martin Crimp, was commissioned in 2006 by the Festival d'Automne in Paris. It received its London premiere at the
Royal Opera House in February 2009. Their second collaboration, Written on Skin, premiered at the
Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2012. Benjamin conducted the UK premiere at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in March 2013.[12]Lessons in Love and Violence, a third collaboration with Martin Crimp, premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2018.[13] His fourth opera, the 70-minute Picture a Day like this, again with Crimp, was commissioned by and first produced at the Aix Festival at the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in 2023; Benjamin conducted with
Marianne Crebassa as the woman.[14]
Benjamin now lives in northwest London with his partner, the filmmaker Michael Waldman, whose recent credits include The Day John Lennon Died, The Scandalous Adventures of Lord Byron, and the TV miniseries Musicality.
^George Benjamin,
"My heroes and I", The Guardian (London), 20 September 2002: He was artistic consultant to the BBC's 3-year retrospective of 20th-century music for the Millennium, 'Sounding the Century'. There have been major retrospectives of his work in London, Pris, Tokyo, Brussels, Berlin, Strasbourg, San Francisco and Madrid.