Biography

Benjamin Beckman (b. 2000) is a composer, conductor, and pianist seeking to create intellectually stimulating and emotionally charged works of art for a 21st century landscape. His music, rooted in the Classical tradition, draws influence from a wide variety of styles – from post-rock, to jazz fusion, to traditional Jewish cantillation, among many others – to synthesize a new and unique sound for the modern world.

Beckman’s orchestral music has been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, the Yale Symphony Orchestra and the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Orchestra, led by conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Ken-David Masur, Ruth Reinhardt, and William Boughton. Other collaborations include those with the Long Beach Opera, Opera Elect, Frost School of Music Ensemble Ibis, Triton Brass, the Lyris Quartet, and the Thornton Edge. His music has been notably presented on the BBC Proms, the Tanglewood Music Festival, Concertgebouw Presents: Summer Concerts, the HearNow Festival, the Hot Air Festival, NPR’s From the Top, YoungArts Los Angeles, and Yale College New Music. In 2021, Beckman released VOYAGE, a full-length jazz fusion album alongside saxophonist Roshan Nayar. His 2023 opera Passage, with librettist Adam Haliburton, was the first-ever evening-length opera to be premiered by the Opera Theatre of Yale College and was awarded Yale’s Beekman Cannon Friends of Music Prize for most outstanding senior thesis in the music major.

His compositions have been recognized by both the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould and Herb Alpert Awards, the New York Youth Symphony’s First Music commissioning program, the American Composers Forum Nextnotes Awards, the National YoungArts Foundation, and composition competitions sponsored by the Philadelphia Organ Festival, the University of Miami, the University of Kentucky, the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra, Opera Elect, and the Boston New Music Initiative. He is a recipient of ASCAP Plus, Yale Saybrook Shutack, Yale Slifka Center Blanksteen Fund, and Yale Creative and Performing Arts Award grants. Beckman has also been awarded Yale’s Abraham Beekman Cox Prize for most outstanding composer in the junior class, the Joseph Selden Memorial Award, the R.J.R. Cohen Fellowship for Musical Studies, and served as a Student Marshal representing Saybrook College at the 2023 University Commencement.

Past teachers and mentors include Sarah Gibson, Andrew Norman, Sean Shepherd, Martin Amlin, and Justin Casinghino. Beckman participated in the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Composer Fellowship Program from 2016 to 2019, and in summers has studied composition at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America, the fresh inc. festival, the Norfolk New Music Workshop, and the Zodiac Music Festival. In Fall 2023 Beckman completed the intensive music major at Yale College where he studied composition with Kathryn Alexander and Konrad Kaczmarek. Beckman has also taught composition for Through the Staff, an organization dedicated to offering free music lessons to young musicians who may not otherwise have access to them. At Yale, Beckman served as Artistic Director of both the Opera Theatre of Yale College and the Yale Undergraduate Chamber Orchestra. Under his leadership, YUCO facilitated the premieres of 21 works composed by Yale undergraduates.

Beyond composition, Beckman is also adept as a repetiteur, vocal coach, and collaborative pianist. He has accompanied productions of Carmen, Luisa Miller, Lucia di Lammermoor (Sarasota Opera), L’Orfeo, Doriclea (Yale Baroque Opera Project), The Turn of the Screw (Chicago Summer Opera), Riders to the Sea (Opera Theater of Yale College), and this summer will be working on La scala di seta and La fille du regiment with Opera Company of Middlebury, and Rusalka with Pacific Opera Project. He is the Artistic Director of Park City Opera, a local and independent opera company serving Park City, UT, which he co-founded alongside longtime friends and collaborators Lena Goldstein and Lisl Wangermann.

Beckman is currently a member of Los Angeles-based chamber music presenter Salastina’s Sounds Promising composer apprenticeship program studying with Derrick Skye. This fall, he will begin his master’s degree in composition at USC Thornton School of Music, where he will also serve as the manager of the university’s contemporary music ensemble, Thorton Edge.