Ben is a member of the Pierre Boulez Ensemble and principal horn of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He was a prize-winner at the 2019 YCAT International Auditions and a BBC Young Musician Concerto Finalist in 2016. Ben joined us at Leicester Museum for last year’s festival and gave us a wonderful lunchtime concert in March with Richard Uttley:
‘…a concert superlatively played in a programme of refreshing diversity.’
Born in London, in 2020 Ben completed his studies with honours at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin with Radek Baborák, and was a concerto-finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition.
Ben has performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo and made his BBC Proms concerto debut in 2022 performing the Ethel Smyth Concerto for Horn and Violin with Elena Urioste and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kazuki Yamada. Ben has also appeared as soloist with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Aurora Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, English Chamber, Royal Philharmonic, London Mozart Players, Lucerne Symphony, Manchester Camerata, Prague Philharmonia and Sinfonie Orchester Berlin.
Highlights in the 2022/23 season included concerto debuts with the Tapiola Sinfonietta (Söderblom), Musikkollegium Winterthur (Heyward) and Ulster Orchestra (Suganandarajah) as well as premiering a new Horn Concerto by Timothy Jackson with the London Chamber Orchestra at Cadogan Hall. A keen advocate for new music, Ben also returned to the Aberdeen Sounds Festival to premiere a new work by British composer Alex Groves for horn and electronics and in the USA, Ben joined Camerata Pacifica to perform the World Premiere of a new Horn Trio by Libby Larsen.
