Benjamin C.S. Boyle is an American composer, pianist, and theorist. His works have been commissioned and premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Chicago Lyric Opera, Montreal Chamber Orchestra, the Kobe City Orchestra, the Crossing Choir, Lyric Fest, and many others the world over. The Crossing Choir’s recording of his Cantata No. 2: Voyages was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2020 for Best Choral Performance. In 2008, at the piano, he gave the US premiere of his Sonata-Fantasy with violinist Tim Fain at the Kennedy Center in Washington and Merkin Hall in New York. In 2005, Bachanalia Orchestra premiered the Cantata No. 1: To One in Paradise for string orchestra and four vocal soloists in New York. He was composer-in-residence with Young Concert Artists from 2005-7 and received representation from them for many years. He is particularly noted for his composition of art songs. A compendium of these works (Complete Songs and Melodies 1998-2014) including some 60 songs was published in 2016. His song cycle Spirits in Bondage won first prize in the NATS Art Song Competition in 2018.
Performers who champion his music include tenor Bryan Hymel, baritone Randall Scarlata, sopranos Irini Kyriakidou, Sarah Shafer, and Kiera Duffy, marimbist Makoto Nakura, flutist Mimi Stillman, harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, the Daedalus Quartet, pianists Laura Ward, JJ Penna, and Marcantonio Barone, and conductors Donald Nally and Mark Shapiro.
His music is published by Rassel Editions. Lyric Fest is currently recording a two-CD set featuring a large selection of his songs with an all-star cast of singers. Recordings of his Sonata-Cantilena and Three Carols for Wintertide are available from Innova Records. At the piano, Dr. Boyle recorded Les bois du paradis with Makoto Nakura in 2015.
His formative studies in composition, harmony, counterpoint, and analysis were under the guidance of Dr. Philip Lasser of the Juilliard School. He was trained in the method of Nadia Boulanger. At the age of 25, Dr. Boyle was the youngest person ever to receive a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in Composition, after completing a M.M. from The Peabody Conservatory and a B.M. from the University of South Florida where he studied piano with Robert Helps.
Dr. Boyle is Associate Director and Faculty in Composition, Keyboard Harmony, Counterpoint, and Analysis at the EAMA Summer Music Institute in Paris. In 2020, he co-founded the EAMA Academy, an online year-round music training program for some of the finest students the world over. He runs Analysis Salon, a lecture series now in its sixth season. He was formerly a professor of composition and music theory at Westminster Choir College, St. Joseph’s University, Temple University, and several other universities. He maintains a lively private studio for composers, conductors, and instrumentalists in Philadelphia and with students around the globe.
