Composer Benjamin C. S. Boyle’s works include opera, chamber music, art songs, sacred and orchestral music. Most recently, his commission for Sonata-Cantelina, a flute and piano work, by the Dolce Suono Chamber Music Concerts, which premiered February 2010 as part of the Samuel Barber centennial celebration at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, has been released on Innova Records and recorded by flutist Mimi Stillman (YCA alumna). Recent performances of his works included a recital of only Boyle compositions at Westminster Choir College; his Impromptus and Arabesques for Orchestra was premiered by the Delaware County Symphony; and his piece Les bois du paradis for marimba and piano will be premiered in Kobe, Japan later this season.
Mr. Boyle was commissioned by the American Friends of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of the Netherlands to write a work for the Orchestra’s brass section to celebrate Henry Hudson’s discovery of the river, which he entitled Hudson Sinfonia. The work premiered in 2009 at Riverside Church in New York City, and was broadcast live on WQXR. He was commissioned by the Chicago Lyric Opera Chorus for a choral work, The Holly and the Ivy, in 2008, and by Hope College in Holland, Michigan for a Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, premiered by organist Huw Lewis. His setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah premiered in November 2005 at St. Mark’s Church (PA), and To One in Paradise, his cantata for string orchestra and vocal soloists set to texts by Edgar Allan Poe, was premiered by the Bachanalia Festival Orchestra at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Pianist Magdalena Baczewska both commissioned and performed Ballade, which premiered at Carnegie’s Weill Hall and was later performed by pianist Chu-Fang Huang in the Young Concert Artists Series in March 2007. Sonata-Fantasy was performed with Mr. Boyle at the piano and violinist Tim Fain at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.
Mr. Boyle was selected as Young Concert Artists Composer-in-Residence in 2005 and holds YCA’s William B. Butz Composer Chair. YCA commissioned two works from Mr. Boyle, which were premiered by YCA artists in the YCA Series. Suite Sylvanesque, for solo harp, was premiered by harpist Emmanuel Ceysson at his debut recitals at Zankel Hall and at the Kennedy Center in November 2006. His Sonata for cello and piano was premiered by cellist Efe Baltacigil and pianist Anna Polonsky at Carnegie’s Zankel Hall in New York in December 2005 and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in April 2006.
The youngest ever to receive a Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Boyle earned a Master of Music in Composition from The Peabody Conservatory, and a Bachelor of Music in Piano from the University of South Florida, where he studied with Robert Helps. Mr. Boyle also studied for several years with Dr. Philip Lasser at the European-American Musical Alliance (EAMA) program at L’Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, where he returns each summer as a faculty member. He has studied with Narcis Bonet, David del Tredici, Christopher Theofanidis, Samuel Adler, Lukas Foss, and Nicholas Maw. Mr. Boyle is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Composition, Keyboard Harmony, Counterpoint, and Analysis at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. His music is published by Rassel Editions of New York and Paris.
[Surname is pronounced: Boil]
Benjamin C.S. Boyle Media
