Ben Smith

Ben Smith is a London-based pianist and composer specialising in contemporary music. His compositions and writings are often concerned with phenomenological and semiotic approaches to material and repetition, the foregrounding of silence as a formal parameter, and objects from visual art and poetry. His music has been featured on Score Follower (islands) and One Glass Eye Records (thirty-six views of the same thing), and his performances have been featured numerous times on BBC Radio 3. Ben was a Junior Fellow at Guildhall School of Music & Drama from 2020-2022, where he previously studied with Laurence Crane, Rolf Hind, and James Weeks. In demand both as a soloist and chamber performer (An Assembly, Explore Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, Uproar Ensemble) he is known for daring and virtuosic performances which traverse the extremes of the contemporary repertoire, ranging from New Complexity to Wandelweiser. He has performed across the UK and internationally, including London venues Ambika P3, Barbican Hall, Hackney Round Chapel, Kings Place, Milton Court Concert Hall, St John’s Smith Square, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and Wigmore Hall.

He has given world and UK premieres by Peter Ablinger (Silk Street Music Hall), Patrícia Sucena de Almeida (Transit: Festival voor nieuwe muziek), Sarah Angliss (Aldeburgh Festival), Eric Egan (inn:pust festval), Michael Finnissy (Spitalfields Music), Anders Hillborg (BBC Total Immersion), Eva-Maria Houben (Borough New Music), Evan Johnson (Cafe OTO, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival), Ragnar Kjartansson (London Contemporary Music Festival), Helmut Lachenmann (BPSE), Sylvia Lim (Musicon) Rebecca Saunders (Musicon), Alastair White (Tête-à-tête Opera Festival), and Rasmus Zwicki (Ny Musik i Birkerød). Recording projects include works by Nomi Epstein and Paul Newland (another timbre), Brian Ferneyhough and Alastair White (métier), and the complete piano works of Evan Johnson (all that dust).