Richard Benjafield - Percussion
Co-founder of Ensemble Bash and now of Three Strange Angels, Richard Benjafield studied at the RNCM, Tanglewood Music Centre and the University of Ghana. He performs with the London Sinfonietta, Nash Ensemble, Composers' Ensemble, Endymion, Almeida Opera and Apartment House, and has been Professor of Percussion and Director of Percussion Ensemble at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama since 1995. As a soloist, Richard has toured Britain to great acclaim with the Richard Alston Dance Company in Xenakis's Psappha. In 2000, Richard conducted at the dedication ceremony of London's Millennium Bridge, shortly before its closure.Recently he has appeared at the Aldeburgh Festival, with Jurgen Simpson and Simon Doyle at Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, with Sarah Leonard and John Kenny at the Festival Inter-Celtique in France, and in a solo improvised concert to live graphic projections at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. In January 2004 Richard was both soloist and conductor in an acclaimed performance with the GSMD Percussion Ensemble in the BBC John Cage Festival at the Barbican Centre and on BBC Radio 3. In March 2004 he performed Morton Feldman’s four-hour epic For Philip Guston at the Royal Academy of Art, with Nicolas Hodges and Mario Caroli, and in July he conducted John Woolrich’s song cycle The Sea and its Shore for Almeida Opera.
Future solo performances include John Cage and Fluxus repertoire at Wien Modern in 2004 (performing in the Butterfly Conservatory and Wittengensteinhuas, and Messiaen’s “From the Canyons to the Stars” with Pierre-Laurent-Aimard and the Northern Sinfonia in March 2005. Richard recently completed a research project on Ghanaian xylophone music, funded by GSMD Research Centre for Teaching & Learning, and is now working on a major project on percussion ensemble.