His mastery over each work made the rehearsals a time for excitement and pleasure. The result was a
concert of great fulfilment for the large, expectant audience, who gave every sign of thoroughly enjoying the works on hand conducted by one of our country’s most promising young maestros.
Award-winning British conductor and composer Benjamin Ellin has an international career spanning symphonic and operatic repertoire, contemporary music, theatre and film. His work has taken him from major concert halls and opera houses to schools and community projects, with a career built around a passion for collaboration, diversity and a commitment to delivering ambitious music across a range of genres.
As a guest conductor, Benjamin has worked with many of the UK's leading orchestras, including the Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, alongside international ensembles including the Jena Philharmonic, Orchestre de Picardie, Orchestre National de Lille, Shanghai Opera House Orchestra, Gunma Symphony Orchestra, St Petersburg Symphony and Luxembourg Philharmonic, among others.
Opera has been a significant part of Benjamin's conducting career. From 2007–2015 he was Music Director of Focus Opera, curating and conducting productions at Chiswick House including Carmen, The Barber of Seville and Così fan tutte. He has continued to champion opera alongside his symphonic and contemporary work, with recent performances of Don Giovanni, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Tosca and The Marriage of Figaro.
Benjamin's current roles include co-founder and Musical Director of De Mowbray Music and the De Mowbray Music Festival in North Yorkshire, Music Director of the Thursford Christmas Spectacular, co-founder, conductor and composer of Tafahum, Principal Conductor of the Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra, President of Pembroke Academy of Music, London, and Lecturer in Conducting at Leeds Conservatoire. He is also a founding trustee of the Evgeny Svetlanov Charitable Trust.
A strong advocate for music education and participation, Benjamin is particularly interested in the connections between professional, educational and community music-making. Through De Mowbray Music he has developed an extensive programme of orchestral workshops, youth performance opportunities, community performances and educational projects, bringing professional musicians together with performers of different ages and levels of experience. His educational work also includes composition workshops in schools, including projects with GCSE Music students through the English Chamber Orchestra, where students have created and performed their own film scores.
Benjamin studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before undertaking conducting training in St Petersburg, Russia, and subsequently studying conducting privately with Sir Colin Davis.
Benjamin Ellin is a fine and serious musician. I have no hesitation in recommending him.
His work as a composer is similarly broad, encompassing orchestral and chamber music, concertos, symphonies, vocal and choral works, film scores and cross-arts commissions. His music has been performed and broadcast internationally in the concert hall, theatre and on screen.
His Violin Concerto MIYABI was premiered by the Philharmonia Orchestra in London in 2015, while his Sinfonia No. 1 was performed at the Royal Opera House with the Royal Ballet School in 2017. In 2022, the Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition commissioned Benjamin to compose a symphony commemorating the 20th anniversary of Svetlanov's death. His Symphony No. 1 was premiered in Moscow under Dmitri Jurowski.
Your ‘Sinfonia No 2’ is a beautiful piece, rich in colors and atmosphere and very well written for every instrument of the orchestra. The musicians, the public and myself appreciated the piece highly.
Benjamin has developed a close creative relationship with First Nations communities in Alberta through his longstanding collaboration with distinguished violist Rivka Golani. This has inspired a series of commissioned works, including Siksika, Baker Massacre and Nahdoosi, drawing on the history and culture of the communities with whom he has worked.
...beguilingly scored and intelligently structured…the music constantly evolves. Magical.
In 2020, Benjamin received the first British commission for a bass trombone concerto from Opera North. Gresley was premiered by bass trombonist Christian Jones and the Orchestra of Opera North in 2021 and subsequently featured on the 2023 album Windows. His oratorio One Before Zero, commissioned by the Orchestre de Picardie for the centenary commemorations of the Battle of the Somme, was premiered in France in 2016 and has subsequently been performed in Slovakia and Germany as well as its UK premiere at Chetham's School of Music in 2025.
…In addition to the two soloists and the boys' choir, it was above all the composer who made the great tension of his oratorio audible on the podium of the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra and allowed everyone involved to play with such intensity that the tension was transmitted to the audience. Benjamin Ellin's oratorio is able to move the hearts of the listeners and keep alive the memory of the traumatic conditions of the war. The warmth and cordiality with which Benjamin Ellin's oratorio was received speaks for the openness of the Jena audience….
In 2026, the English Chamber Orchestra premiered Benjamin's Portraits of Shibden at Shibden Hall, a new work commissioned for the orchestra's performance at the historic Yorkshire venue.
Benjamin's career has been recognised with numerous awards. In 2007 he received the Public Prize at the inaugural Evgeny Svetlanov International Conducting Competition, and in 2009 he was awarded the Barlow Endowment Prize for Composition, becoming only the second British composer in twenty-five years to receive the award. His subsequent commission for a trombone concerto was premiered in the USA by New York Philharmonic Principal Trombonist Joseph Alessi in 2012.
His music has been commercially recorded by a number of leading artists. His debut composition album, Three States at Play, was released to critical acclaim in 2012, followed by Osmosis, the debut album of Tafahum, in 2016, featuring predominantly Benjamin's own compositions.
Across conducting, composition, education and community music, Benjamin's work is united by a desire to work across borders and boundaries, creating connections and collaborations between genres, disciplines and cultures.
…Ellin's is a musical voice well worth getting acquainted with…