Profile
Ben is currently a scholar at the Royal College of Music, supported by a Glady Hay Award and the Josephine Baker Trust. He was the winner of the 2009 RCM English Song Competition, a finalist in the 2010 RCM Singing Competition, and is a Retrospect Young Artist. Ben was a Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Philosophy.
Operatic engagements include Mirtillo (lead) in Handel’s Il Pastor Fido (1734) and Tassile in Handel’s Alessandro with the RCM International Opera School in the London Handel Festival, conducted by Laurence Cummings. Arsamenes in Handel’s Xerxes with Fitzwilliam Chamber Opera; Hamor in Handel’s Jephtha (staged) in the Grimeborn Festival; Alessandro (cover) in Handel’s Tolomeo with English Touring Opera; “Orpheus Britannicus - A celebration of Purcell” with the Mercurius Company at the Cadogan Hall; and Kaspar Hauser (title role) by Alexis Pope, in the Tête à Tête and Grimeborn Opera Festivals.
Recent performances include Ben’s Wigmore Hall debut in Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Retrospect Ensemble; Purcell’s Hail, Bright Cecilia in the Armorial Hall, State Hermitage, St. Petersburg; Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Trafalgar Sinfonia at St Martin- in-the-Fields, Bach’s St John Passion and Handel’s Messiah with Charivari Agreable, and Bach’s Mass in B minor with The Brook Street Band. Future engagements include Purcell’s The Fairy Queen with Retrospect Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall, covering Michael Chance in The Lovely Ladies by Peter Cowdrey with Opera Unlimited, and the role of Tragedy in Stephen Oliver’s Euridice (after Jacopo Peri) with British Youth Opera.
Ben works with pianist and composer, Peter Foggitt, whose song cycle Amoretti (Second Set) he premiered last year. Upcoming recitals include a performance of Schumann’s Dichterliebe at Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, and a recital of Purcell/Britten with tenor Stuart Jackson at St. Margaret’s, Westminster.