Dr Benjamin Tassie (b.1987) is a composer, sound-artist, and researcher. With a practice spanning long-form microtonal structures, custom electronics, multimedia artworks, and installation, his work asks how Early Music instruments, tuning systems, and performance practices can be reactivated to speak to our contemporary experiences.
He has built water-powered musical instruments, created site-specific works staged in disused factories and Medieval churches, and reconfigured some of the world’s most significant historical organs using the latest digital performance technologies. His work has been shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award and named among New Scientist’s albums of the year. Commissions include works for The National Gallery, Tate Britain, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Royal Holloway’s Cyborg Soloists project, with performances in the UK and internationally, including at Het Orgelpark, Amsterdam.
Alongside his compositional practice, Tassie is Lecturer in Composition at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and hosts Future Classical on Resonance FM, where he has interviewed composers including George Benjamin, John Luther Adams, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Contact: benjamintassie[at]gmail[dot]com
The Marchus Trust Grant
2026
Funds to support the commission of a new work for saxophone and electronics, composed for David Zucchi. The piece – O Suns-O Grass of Graves – will be premiered at the Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield, in November 2026.
Hinrichsen Foundation Grant
2026
Funds to support the commission of a new work for saxophone and electronics, composed for David Zucchi. The piece – O Suns-O Grass of Graves – will be premiered at the Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield, in November 2026.
Arts Council England R&D Grant
2026
Funds to support a focused period of R&D into narrative nonfiction writing about contemporary composing. Through structured writing experiments, skills development, and specialist mentorship, I will test new approaches to form, voice, and narrative, exploring how complex musical practice can be communicated for non-specialist readers. Moving away from broadcast formats toward long-form writing, R&D will expand my practice in a new direction, developing a book proposal and sample chapters.
Vaughan Williams Trust Grant
2026
Funds to support the commission of a new work for saxophone and electronics, composed for David Zucchi. The piece – O Suns-O Grass of Graves – will be premiered at the Crucible Playhouse, Sheffield, in November 2026.
BCU Research Grant
2026
A grant from Birmingham City University to support research in partnership with gambist Dr Liam Byrne. Our project, Resonant Archaeologies, will combine microtonal composition, bass viol performance, experimental studio recording, and interactive multimedia and VR practices to develop new artistic models for audio-visual immersion as a mode of bodily engagement.
Ivor Novello Award
2024
A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award 2024 in the category of ‘Best Sound-art’.
The Marchus Trust Grant
2023
The Marchus Trust have generously awarded support for A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, an album and film of new music for water-powered historical instruments and live instrumentalists, recorded and filmed in the historic Rivelin Valley in Sheffield.
Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant
2023
I was grateful to be awarded an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant to support recording and filming of A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, my new album of music for water-powered historical instruments. The grant allowed me to work with sound-recordist Ross Davidson and filmmakers OPUS (as well as other collaborators) over a week recording and filming in the Rivelin valley, Sheffield. The resulting album will be released on the Birmingham Record Co. (an imprint of NMC) in November 2023.
PRS Foundation Composers’ Fund award with Jerwood Arts
2021
I am delighted to be awarded the PRS Foundation’s Composers’ Fund 2021 in partnership with Jerwood Arts. The fund is intended to support composers with a strong track record at a pivotal stage in their career. I will work with instrument designer Sam Underwood to design and build three water-powered historical instruments. Installed in historic rivers in Sheffield, the resulting music will be recorded for release on the Birmingham Record Co. label, an imprint of NMC.
UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship
2020-2024
I have been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council scholarship through the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership to complete my PhD at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Supervised by Professor Joe Cutler and Professor Jamie Savan, the project investigates new music arising from research with historical instruments and analogue synthesisers.
Arts Council England ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ Grant
2020
This Arts Council England ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ grant was awarded in order for me to take time to develop my writing for historical instruments and electronics. The project involves recording notable examples of historical instruments (harpsichords, organs, viols) in collections at The Royal College of Music Museum, Kew Palace/Royal Collection Trust, Handel and Hendrix in London, and elsewhere. These recordings will be used in the studio, alongside electronics and analogue synthesisers, developing material for a new album. Museum visits have been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
Jerwood Arts Bursary
2020
I was awarded this bursary to work with sopranos Ella Taylor and Heloise Werner to develop new writing for voices and synthesisers. Time in the studio was followed by a workshop exploring material developed with the poet Jacqueline Saphra which will inform future music-theatre composition.
Britten-Pears Red House Residency
2019
In August 2019, I spent a week with the poet Jacqueline Saphra at Benjamin Britten’s The Red House in Aldeburgh as part of the inaugural Wild Plum Arts residency series. During this week, Jacqueline and I developed an outline of, and tested material for, a new music-theatre piece exploring ecological themes. This was a development of the aria we wrote for The National Opera Studio’s 12:40 celebrations.
Arts Foundation Award
2018
I was delighted to be shortlisted for the prestigious Arts Foundation Award in 2018 in the ‘performing arts’ category. That year marked the 25th Anniversary celebrations of the award with previous winners nominating artists.
Sound and Music Composer-Curator Award
2018
In 2018, I was awarded a Sound and Music Composer-Curator award with support from the PRS Foundation. This grant was awarded for my Classical Remix series and allowed me to develop a UK tour of Synth Remix. The project featured a new commission by electronic musician Jo Thomas based on archival research at the University of Manchester and BBC Archives into the music of electronic pioneer Delia Derbyshire. Alongside Jo’s work, the performances featured a set by artist and musician Olivia Louvel as well as DJ Sets. The project was additionally supported by Arts Council England, and the London performance was broadcast live on Resonance EXTRA.
Help Musicians UK Bursary
2016
A grant from Help Musicians UK allowed me to attend the prestigious Rarescale Summer School to develop my writing for low flutes and electronics. While there, I worked with flautist Carla Rees to compose new music for alto flute, contrabass flute and electronics.
New Voices Composer Award
2015
I was selected by Sound and Music to write new music for the percussionist Joby Burgess. In a series of workshops, I developed the piece ‘Drop’ which was premiered in a concert at the National Portrait Gallery in London and recorded for my album Wurl with support from the British Music Collection.
PRS Foundation Composer Award
2015
This award from the PRS Foundation was to support a studio recording of my collaboration with the poet Jacqueline Saphra, If I Lay on My Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women. The music, for cello, piano, and spoken word. was recorded by the pianist Siwan Rhys, cellist Corentin Chassard, and Jacqueline.
Saboteur Awards: Best Collaborative Work
2015
For the release of the poet Jacqueline Saphra’s collection of prose poems, If I Lay on My Back I Saw Nothing But Naked Women, I composed a series of miniatures for piano, cello, and spoken word. This collaboration also featured illustrations by Mark Andrew Webber and was the winner of the 2015 Saboteur award for Best Collaborative Work.
Britten Sinfonia OPUS2014
2014
I was finalist with the Britten Sinfonia’s OPUS2014 programme, writing new work for small ensemble. The project included a number of workshops.
St. Marylebone Educational Foundation Grant
2012
Additional support for my Masters degree at the Royal College of Music was offered by the St. Marylebone Educational Foundation.
Royal College of Music Scholarship
2009-2012
To undertake my Masters studies in composition at the Royal College of Music in London, I was an RCM Scholar with support from the Angela Nankivell Award.
Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust Grant
2009-2012
I was awarded a grant from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust to complete my Masters studies in composition at the Royal College of Music.
Press for A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time
“best science-inflected music albums of 2023… highly original… delicate, captivating” – Tim Boddy New Scientist
“a very subtle and time slowing album – I mean that in the best sense. This is music that really sings of the Rivelin as it is today… working in the very noble tradition of attentive, slow burn river compositions… I found that quiet sense of acknowledgement and repurposing [of the river] in the project really moving, actually, and the sounds of the instruments have a pleasing, woozy twang and tug about them” – Kate Molleson, BBC Radio 3 New Music Show
“The album collects lulling compositions which feel more about continuity than eventfulness, a series of texturally rich drift states at odds with the constant stream of the river that underbeds them…. Tassie’s compositions unearth hidden eddies and currents in the river. As if the instruments are plotting the paths of different energies and trajectories beneath what, on the surface, seems linear and homogenous. What’s superficially constant becomes multifaceted, layered and filled with nuance when transmuted into sound.” – Daryl Worthington The Quietus
“There is a hypnotic quality, meditative about the repetition that is not quite repetition, a sense of variation within a natural flow… combining water-powered and musician-made sounds to completely intriguing effect, highly multi-layered yet feeling as if arising out of the landscape… There is something wonderfully poetic about this disc, along with a craziness that asks for it to be taken on completely its own terms. You have to listen with ears attuned to a different rhythm, but if you do then the results have a kind of magic.” – Robert Hugill Planet Hugill
“composer Benjamin Tassie… wants to give the river its voice back. Working with instrument maker Sam Underwood, he’s designed and built a set of instruments that are actually played by the Rivelin itself… the project aims to reconnect us with the living world.” – Sam Gregory Now Then Magazine
The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp – Mathew Blackwell, Bandcamp Daily
Interview with Where the Leaves Fall
“A fascinating new record… get a bit of morning meditation with Tassie’s natural wonder” – Andy Raven Sings the Blues
Press for Silvertown
“the most moving pairings of architecture and music” – Russel Potter, Monocle
“London Festival of Architecture 2017: the top 20 exhibitions and events… composer Benjamin Tassie and poet Anna Freud have designed an immersive music experience inspired by the history of Silvertown” – Harriet Thorpe, Wallpaper*