Ben Pease Barton

Ben Pease Barton (b.2000) is a British composer based in London. He has written for ensembles including EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, the Gildas and Ligeti Quartets, PlusMinus Ensemble, Guildhall Session Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, and for soloists including clarinettists Heather Roche and Jonathan Willett, pianists Ben Smith and William Bracken, sopranos Faryl Smith and Manon Ogwen Parry, and violinists Kryštof Kohout and Zoe Hodi. Conductors he has worked with include Jack Sheen, Sir Antonio Pappano, William Cole, James Weeks, Darren Bloom and Alphonse Cemin.

Ben currently studies with Julian Anderson at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where he completed his undergraduate studies with Anderson, Cassandra Miller and Malcolm Singer, receiving the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Prize for composition. His studies have been generously supported by a Guildhall School Scholarship, a Vaughan Williams Bursary and a Henry Wood Trust Scholarship. Before starting at Guildhall, he studied with David Stowell and Simon Limbrick, and from 2016-18 was a Leverhulme Arts Scholar. He has participated in courses and masterclasses in the UK and abroad with composers including Michael Jarrell, Tom Coult, Charlotte Bray, Helmut Lachenmann and Ramon Lazkano.

Ben’s second collaboration with writer Olivia Bell, Fall (2023) – a setting of her specially written poem of the same title – was recently performed by its dedicatees Manon Ogwen Parry, Kryštof Kohout and William Bracken at Carnegie Hall, New York in January 2024.