Benjamin Scheer

Benjamin Scheer is an American composer of chamber, vocal and symphonic works. He began compositional studies with Augusta Read Thomas and then continued undergraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music with Robert Morris, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and David Liptak. Scheer further earned his master’s in composition at the New England Conservatory of Music with Michael Gandolfi. He is currently in the Doctor of Musical Arts Program at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.

Scheer has been invited to renowned summer festivals that include the Bowdoin International Music Festival and the Atlantic Music Festival, and composition fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Center and the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau. He had his first commission in 2013 from the New Haven Symphony Orchestra to write a concert piece, ART Dances, honoring his former mentor Augusta Read Thomas. It was praised as a “surprise sonorous gift, he made full use of all the resources the NHSO had gathered for Thursday’s concert," and his next orchestral work, Narcissus, was honored by the Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute. Scheer was recently commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to write a string quartet for their 2022 season. His string quartet, The Funambulist’s Double, will be premiered in Santa Fe by the FLUX Quartet on August 5, 2022. 

Scheer is passionate about teaching. At NEC, he worked as a graduate teaching assistant for the theory department, teaching undergraduate keyboard harmony. He has also guest lectured for an advanced undergraduate analysis course, for which he designed and taught a full lecture on the “Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. He is a faculty member at SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts where he teaches music theory.