Early recognition Benjamin's compositional talent emerged early. At seventeen, while still a student at Christ's Hospital, he won the 1993
BBC Young Musician of the Year Composer's Award for
Antagony, a substantial work scored for two large wind bands, amplified strings, and six percussionists. The work was performed by the
London Sinfonietta under conductor
Martyn Brabbins and broadcast on
BBC Two television and
BBC Radio 3. In 1996, Benjamin won the Stephen Oliver Prize for Contemporary Opera for his first opera,
The Bridge, with a libretto by playwright
David Edgar. The prize, worth £10,000, was awarded to a young composer for a new work of opera. During 1997 and 1998, the Stephen Oliver Trust worked with the Royal Northern College of Music and the BOC Covent Garden Festival to stage the winning opera; both
The Bridge and the 1994 winner
David Horne's
Travellers were brought to the stage in June 1998 as part of the Covent Garden Festival.
The Corley Conspiracy (2007), commissioned by the
London Design Festival, premiered at the
Purcell Room,
Southbank Centre. The 75-minute work is based on the paranoid
Usenet postings of one "Mike Corley" during the 1990s.
The Guardians Guy Dammann wrote that "its broken, cracked lyricism speaks profoundly to contemporary humanity" and urged readers: "Corley's story is one that needs to be told, and it is told using music that needs to be listened to." The UK premiere followed at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, with soprano Laura Sheerin as Marie.
Emily (2013) addressed the suffragette
Emily Wilding Davison, who died after stepping in front of the King's horse at the
1913 Epsom Derby. The two-hour opera, to Benjamin's own libretto, premiered at the Hippodrome Theatre in
Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
The Guardian noted that "Benjamin directs the opera himself with considerable theatrical flair."
The Fire of Olympus; or, On Sticking It To The Man (2019), with libretto by Anthony Peter, is a large-scale opera retelling the
Prometheus and
Pandora myth in a contemporary, dystopian setting. Zeus appears as an authoritarian president, undermined by activists led by the prankster Prometheus. The musical language draws heavily on Handel's Italian operas but is sung in modern English, employing
opera seria conventions of recitative and aria. The production was developed in collaboration with Emma Stafford, Professor of Greek Culture at the
University of Leeds, as part of her
AHRC-funded "Hercules: a Hero for All Ages" research project. A film version, produced by East View Film with Benjamin as director, was premiered in Leeds on 16 November 2019 and subsequently released on the streaming platform
Marquee TV. The cast comprised Sophie Dicks as Prometheus, Robert Glyndwr Garland as Zeus, Charlotte Hoather as Pandora, Michael Vincent Jones as Hephaestus, and Elspeth Marrow as Epimetheus. The concert was broadcast live across Europe. As part of the festival's "Music of the 21st Century" series, Benjamin participated in the International Composers' Forum alongside composers including
Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Dove, and
Patrick Hawes.
There Is Nothing Here (2024), for orchestra and soprano, received its world premiere on 19 September 2024 at Madetoja Hall in
Oulu, Finland, performed by Oulu Sinfonia with soprano Emma Mustaniemi and conductor Adomas Morkūnas. The work was composed as a companion piece to
Jean Sibelius's tone poem
Luonnotar, sharing its creation mythology subject matter. The orchestra's programme notes described Benjamin as "a master of styles, whose next move is impossible to predict". The works are scored for male voices with an "immersive audio soundtrack".
Radius Opera In 2007, Benjamin co-founded the ensemble Radius with composer Ian Vine, who had been a contemporary at the Royal Northern College of Music from 1994–1997. The ensemble's model draws on the 1960s collective
The Fires of London, with core instrumentation derived from
Schoenberg's
Pierrot Lunaire: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion. Radius has performed at major London venues including the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre and
Wigmore Hall.
Classical Music magazine praised the group's debut performances: "The performance by the young contemporary music ensemble Radius was exceptionally assured." == International recognition ==