17 Facts About Benjamin Verdery

Benjamin Verdery was born on 1955 and is an American classical guitarist, composer and teacher.

Benjamin Verdery has played and recorded with a wide range of classical and other musicians, including guitarists William Coulter, Leo Kottke, Paco Pena, Andy Summers and John Williams, vocalist Hermann Prey, composer Anthony Newman, and his wife, flutist Rie Schmidt.

Benjamin Verdery has taught at the Yale School of Music since 1985.

Benjamin Verdery was born in 1955 in Danbury, Connecticut, to John Duane Verdery, an Episcopalian minister and headmaster of the Wooster School, and Suzanne Aldrich Verdery.

Benjamin Verdery became interested in music after hearing The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" in 1963.

Early in his career, Benjamin Verdery was recognized in magazines such as Classical Guitar, Guitar Player and Billboard among "a new breed of classical guitarists" and "advocates of new guitar music" stretching the instrument through inventive transcriptions, new compositions, and diverse influences, performance contexts and programs.

Benjamin Verdery has performed internationally, at venues including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw, the Metropolitan Opera, Wigmore Hall, and guitar festivals around the world.

Benjamin Verdery has played with guitarists William Coulter, Frederic Hand, Leo Kottke, Paco Pena, Nano Stern and John Williams, and vocalist Jessye Norman, among others.

Benjamin Verdery has composed works for classical and non-classical guitar for solo and duo performance, guitar quartets, chamber groups and orchestras, for himself and others, including Sergio and Odair Assad, David Russell, David Tanenbaum, Scott Tennant, and John Williams and John Etheridge.

Benjamin Verdery has written chamber music for his group Ufonia and for a work commissioned by the New Jersey Chamber Music Society, titled "Soul Force".

Several composers have written for Benjamin Verdery, including Daniel Asia, Sergio Assad, Martin Bresnick, Elizabeth Brown, Frederic Hand, Aaron Kernis, Ezra Laderman, Hannah Lash, David Leisner, John Anthony Lennon, Ingram Marshall, Anthony Newman, Roberto Sierra, Jack Vees, and his former student Bryce Dessner, of The National.

In 2016, Benjamin Verdery released On Vineyard Sound, an album of originals written by Yale School of Music composition faculty that he performed on solo guitar and in duets.

In 2016, Benjamin Verdery collaborated with rapper Billy Dean Thomas, creating four videos, including Black Bach and Hoochie Coochie Man.

Benjamin Verdery has been a guitar professor at the Yale School of Music since 1985.

Benjamin Verdery has taught at New York University, Manhattan School of Music, Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, Centro Flamenco Paco Pena, and his own annual summer master class on Maui, Hawaii.

Benjamin Verdery's teaching philosophy balances technique, interpretation and performance, while emphasizing curiosity, intuition, and the physical relationship to the instrument, including posture and breathing.

Benjamin Verdery was the artistic director of 92nd Street Y's Art of the Guitar series from 2007 to 2020 and served as artistic director of the D'Addario Foundation for the Performing Arts.