Ben Nobuto

Photograph of Ben Nobuto

Ben Nobuto is a British/Japanese composer and pianist from Kent, UK. With a style described as ‘postmodern’ (Nonclassical) and ‘utterly contemporary’ (Manchester Collective), his music explores themes of attention and fragmentation, often drawing from internet culture and popular idioms in a playful, ironic and surreal manner. More often, his music is concerned with the symbolic nature of sounds rather than the sounds themselves, how memory and meaning are embedded and transmitted sonically.

Previous works have been performed by ensembles such as Manchester Collective, CBSO, Manchester Camerata, Ligeti Quartet, NYCGB, BCMG and Tangram, and have featured on BBC Radio 6, Times Radio and Resonance FM, among others. As a pianist, he often performs his own work, combining a genre-fluid approach to piano-playing with electronics, as in his performance at UK New Artists’ Leicester Takeover Festival in early 2022. He is currently working towards a debut album with the support of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices’ scheme, set to release in Spring 2023.

Ben graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2019, where he holds a BMus and MPhil Distinction-award degree in Music. He was the recipient of the 2019 Bliss Prize for composition.

bennobuto.com