Born in 1978, Benjamin Staern began his musical training studying cello, piano, and percussion. He later pursued musicology at Lund University before studying composition at the Malmö Academy of Music (1998–2005) under Rolf Martinsson, Hans Gefors, and Luca Francesconi. His breakthrough came early with The Threat of War (1999), written while still a student.
Since then, Staern has established a deeply personal style and an extensive repertoire spanning orchestral and chamber music, music drama, solo works, and electroacoustic composition. His synesthetic sensitivity—linking tones and timbres to colours and shades—is central to both his creative process and the character of his music.
Among his most notable works are the concert opener Jubilate (2009), composed for the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; Godai – Concerto for Orchestra (2013) for the Malmö Symphony Orchestra; Songs of Dazzlingly White Love (2013) for alto Anna Larsson and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra; and his Symphony No. 1, Polar Vortex (2014), premiered by Leif Segerstam and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra.
The clarinet concerto Worried Souls (2011), written for Karin Dornbusch and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, received significant acclaim and was awarded Sweden’s foremost composition award, the Major Christ Johnson Prize.
From 2010 to 2014, Staern served as composer-in-residence with the New European Ensemble in The Hague. During this time, he composed works including Tranströmer Songs and the chamber symphony Bells and Waves, which won the Swedish Music Publishers’ Association Award in 2011.
In the summer of 2016, he was featured as composer-in-profile at the Båstad Chamber Music Festival, where Air-Spiral-Light, a concerto for guitar and chamber ensemble with Jacob Kellermann as soloist, was premiered.
December 2016 marked the premiere of his first opera, The Snow Queen, with a libretto by Anelia Kadieva Jonsson based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, at Malmö Opera. The production was highly successful and has since been staged at Theater Vorpommern in Stralsund, Germany, and at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm.
His chamber opera Hilma, exploring the life and work of artist Hilma af Klint, premiered at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and was later performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In April 2022, Staern was featured composer at the Stockholm Concert Hall Composer Weekend Festival, where twelve of his works were performed, including the premiere of his Symphony No. 2, Through Purgatory to Paradise, by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.
From 2024 to 2026, Staern serves as artistic partner of Västerås Sinfonietta, for which he has composed the flute concerto Dancing Fairies. Upcoming projects include a double concerto for violin, piano, and chamber orchestra.
