The music of George Benjamin combines the rich orchestral colors of French Impressionism with the rhythmic vitality of contemporary British music. Benjamin was born in London in 1960. In his late teens, he studied in Paris with Olivier Messiaen and later attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he was taught by Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. British and French influences were already clear in his orchestral work Ringed by the Flat Horizon (1979-80), performed at the Proms while he was still a student. At First Light (1982) draws on the scintillating harmonies of the French Spectralist school. In the ’90s, Benjamin’s music took on a more rhythmic profile, as on Sudden Time (1989-93), in which multiple layers unfold across broad orchestral textures. A similar system of orchestral layers, colliding and combining, makes up Palimpsests, which was premiered by Pierre Boulez in 2002. Benjamin has also been active as a conductor throughout his career, and has appeared regularly with the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Cleveland Orchestra, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In 1999 he made his opera debut conducting Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The work proved influential, leading directly to Benjamin’s Written on Skin (2009-12), hailed as one of the most important and original operas of the 21st century.