Benjamin Alexander Southwick

Biography

Benjamin Alexander Southwick (he/they) is a composer based in the North-East of England. Currently, in his final year of undergraduate study, they are focussing on writing larger-scale works, including an operetta about ants. Benjamin mainly writes for choir including arrangements of tradition carols and settings of Welsh poetry; his latest work is a setting of Owen Sheers' poem 'Swallows'. This was premiered in May 2022 by the Choir of St Cuthberts Society, of which he is also the Director of Music.

Recently, he has been exploring graphic scores and incorporating art into music composition. His piece ‘We Will Remember Them’ (pictured) is a graphic score for string quartet written to commemorate those lost due to transgender-related violence for Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is an ode to those who have died because of transgender-related hate crimes, specifically the 46 trans people in the US alone who died over the course of 2021 before Transgender Day of Remembrance that year. They wrote this piece to give the nameless a voice, and so decided that each player would take on the voice of a person they would like to remember so that the dead will never be forgotten. This piece was awarded Durham University Music Department's EDI Prize 2022.