Arthur Benjamin was an Australian pianist, educator, and composer who was active in England in the 20th century. He was known for his accessible, Caribbean-influenced style, but he also composed operas and several orchestral works and film scores.

Benjamin was born in Sydney in 1893 and moved with his family to Brisbane in 1896. He attended the grammar school there, and in 1902 he began taking piano lessons from George Sampson. He was awarded a scholarship in 1911 that allowed him to attend the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and piano with Frederick Cliffe. Benjamin joined the Royal Air Force in 1914 to fight in World War I, but his plane was shot down and he was captured and held in a German internment camp for the remainder of the war. He returned to Australia in 1919 and began an appointment as piano professor at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. By 1921 he had become discontented and longed for the European lifestyle that he experienced as a student at the RCM. He returned to London that year, and he composed several songs and chamber works. His string quartet Pastoral Fantasy won the Carnegie Prize in 1924, and he became a piano professor at the RCM in 1926. That same year, he also composed his Piano Concertino, which he claimed was inspired by Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Additionally, Benjamin's work as an adjudicator for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music brought him to locations around the world, including Jamaica. It was there that he heard the folk tune Mango Walk, which inspired him to compose his Jamaican Pieces in 1938. This work became one of his most popular, and the Jamaican government awarded him with one barrel of rum per year in appreciation of the extra publicity. Benjamin became known for this accessible and light style, but he also composed serious works like his Symphony, Romantic Fantasy, and the opera The Tale of Two Cities. Throughout the 1940s and '50s, he continued in his roles as an educator and composer, and he became increasingly active in the genre of film music. Around 1957, Benjamin was successfully treated for cancer, but it returned and became fatal in 1960. ~ RJ Lambert, Rovi