Benjamin Scheer

Benjamin Scheer is an American composer of chamber, vocal and symphonic works. Scheer 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. He further earned his master's in composition at the New England Conservatory of Music with Michael Gandolfi and earned his Doctor of Musical Arts at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University where he worked with Michael Hersch. 

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. Scheer 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. The work 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. 

Recently, Scheer was commissioned by the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival to write a string quartet for their 2022 season. His string quartet, The Funambulist’s Double, was premiered in Santa Fe on August 5, 2022. Ben served as the 2024 Composer-in-Residence at the Moritzburg Festival in Dresden, Germany, where he had the European premiere of his string quartet and a world premiere of a commission for string octet. His music was described by German critics as "imaginative" with particular praise for his piece, Nachts im Monströsensaal, for its evocative use of the "Dresden Amen" melody, and its "strings that hovered like veils of mist coalesced into an impulsive, almost ghostly activity." Scheer's music has been performed by artists such as Chad Hoopes, Jan Vogler, Benjamin Beilman, Mira Wang, Stella Chen, Avenue Azure of Ensemble Klang, the Flux Quartet, Floris Mijnders, and Ulrich Eichenauer, among others. He also has an upcoming commission for Music@Menlo, set to premiere in March of 2025.

​Scheer is passionate about teaching. At NEC, he worked as a graduate teaching assistant for the theory department, teaching undergraduate keyboard harmony. Ben is a faculty member at SMU Meadows School of the Arts where he teaches composition and music theory.