Biography
Nick Bentz (b. 1994 - Charleston, SC) is a composer, violinist, and multimedia artist whose work is drawn to remote fringes and recesses of experience. In his work he seeks to render intimately personal spaces imbued with an individual sense of storytelling and narrative. His art centers around the blurring, juxtaposition, and amalgamation of stylistic idioms into singular sonic statements.
Nick's music has been performed by leading artists including International Contemporary Ensemble, yMusic, Ensemble Dal Niente, Hub New Music, HOCKET, Sandbox Percussion, and LIGAMENT, and has been featured at concert venues across North America, Europe, and Asia, including Lincoln Center, Musikverein Wien, Kennedy Center, Cabrillo Festival, Kimmel Center, and Copland House. Increasingly at home with the orchestra, his symphonic works have been played by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Charleston Symphony, Suzhou Symphony Orchestra, and Jacksonville Symphony. His first opera, Having Guests for Dinner was commissioned by /kor/ productions and has been performed by Hillman Opera, Hartford Opera Theater, New Opera West, and Central Washington University.
Nick is an avid collaborator across artistic mediums, with multimedia works exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Shanghai, LA Shorts International Film Festival, Chengdu Museum, KuBe Art Center, Columbia Circle, and venues across the US and China. His piece Million Adversarial Faces was launched into space by Weina Star Technology Company, and is currently in orbit around Earth. His work has received top honors from the Tribeca New Music Festival, the American Prize, the iSING International Young Artists Festival, Boston New Music Initiative, and American Composer’s Orchestra. Nick has held residencies at Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Suncoast Composer Fellowship, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.
As a violinist, Nick has soloed with the Charleston Symphony, Thornton EDGE, and the Pacific Philharmonic. He has also performed with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and attended the Aspen Music Festival for seven summers. An avid interpreter of new music, Nick has commissioned and premiered a number of pieces ranging from chamber and solo pieces to concerti and multimedia works. Current projects include co-commissions from Ensemble Intercontemporain and Wigmore Hall, multimedia projects with filmmaker Alex Atienza and Flannau Duo, and SALMO, a four-act sci-fi tragic opera.
Nick is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, pursuing a doctorate in Music and Multimedia Composition under Anthony Cheung. He received a master’s degree in composition from the University of Southern California. Nick also earned a master's in violin from the Peabody Conservatory, receiving bachelor's degrees in violin and composition from Peabody under the tutelage of Herbert Greenberg and Kevin Puts. Nick's mentors include Wang Lu, Eric Nathan, Butch Rovan, Nina Young, Donald Crockett, Ted Hearne, Andrew Norman, Felipe Lara, and Yiorgos Vassilandonakis; his violin teachers include Lina Bahn, Yuriy Bekker, and Diana Cohen.
