Ben Pease Barton

Ben Pease Barton (b. 2000) is a British composer based in London, writing primarily for live instrumental and vocal performance. His work increasingly explores the fragility and complexity of ancient natural landscapes, and their juxtapositions with, and often intrinsic legacies of, human industrialisation and agriculture. He does not set out to be political or didactic in his work, instead drawing on his upbringing around ancient woodland in Essex (as the son of a forest ranger) to explore these themes from a more intimate, abstract, spiritual standpoint.

Ben has written for ensembles including EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble, the Gildas and Ligeti Quartets, PlusMinus Ensemble, line upon line percussion, the Guildhall Session and Symphony Orchestras, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. He has written for soloists including clarinettists Heather Roche and Jonathan Willett, pianists Ben Smith and William Bracken, singers Faryl Smith and Manon Ogwen Parry, and violinist Kryštof Kohout. Conductors he has worked with include Jack Sheen, Sir Antonio Pappano, William Cole, James Weeks and Alphonse Cemin.

Ben studied with Julian Anderson, Cassandra Miller and Malcolm Singer at Guildhall School of Music & Drama as an undergraduate (first-class honours). He then continued studies with Anderson at the School, completing his master’s with distinction in 2024. At Guildhall, he received the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Prize (2023) for vocal composition, the inaugural Jane Manning-Anthony Payne Award (2024) – the School’s top composition prize – and, upon graduation, the Marjorie & Dorothy Whyte Memorial Award (2024) for graduates of the London conservatoires. He was also supported by a Guildhall School Scholarship, Vaughan Williams Bursary and Henry Wood Trust Scholarship. Before starting at Guildhall, he studied with David Stowell and Simon Limbrick as a Guildhall Young Artists 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.

Recently, Ben was the first ever student composer commissioned for the biennial ‘Guildhall Artists in New York’; Fall for soprano, violin and piano – written in collaboration with writer Olivia Bell – was premiered by Manon Ogwen Parry, Kryštof Kohout and William Bracken at Carnegie Hall and London’s Milton Court in January 2024. In collaboration with writer David Bottomley, he is currently writing a commission for mezzo-soprano Karima El Demerdasch and the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra to be premiered in the Guildhall Gold Medal Concert at the Barbican in May 2025.

Ben is the Composition Tutor at Guildhall Young Artists Norwich.