Studied piano performance in Germany (w/Erich Appel)and Austria (w/Doris Wolff and Sebastian Benda), and music composition in Austria (w/Andrzej Dobrowolski, Jounghi Pagh-Paan, Beat Furrer, and David Felder in Buffalo, NY, including master classes with Michael Jarrell (Blonay/ Switzerland) and Brian Ferneyhough (in Buffalo).     My compositional output encompasses a wide range of scores such as miniatures for piano solo, duos, trios, brass quintet, a variety of larger ensembles, ensembles with organ, a capella choir, and chamber orchestra with soloist.  Most revered conductors, musicians, and ensembles I have worked with include:
   Matthias Pintscher, Emilio Pomarico, James Avery // Szene Instrumental, ContrasTrio, Ensemble Adventure, Ensemble Sur Plus, Klangforum Wien, Slee Sinfonietta //Musicians: Francois Benda, Benjamin Reissenberger – Clarinet // Richard Galler – bassoon // Trevor Bjorklund – trombone // Janna Polyzoides, James Avery – piano // Robert Finster – recorders // Dimitrios Polisoidis – violin, Adrienne Elisha – vla, Jonothan Golove – vlc  // Tony Arnold – soprano,
 performed at international festivals for contemporary music like the INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL in OPATIJA, WIENER HOERGAENGE, the TAGE ZEITGEMAESSER MUSIK BLUDENZ, GRAZER MUSIKPROTOKOLL  of the STYRIAN AUTMN, and JUNE IN BUFFALO.
 
Other professional activities include:                                                            1992-1995 Artistic member of the United Theatres in Graz/Austria as a musical coach for the ballet as well as singers and actors, composer, and Vice Director of the Opera House Choir.
 2000 – 2004 – Freelance composer and teacher in Austria, Hawaii, and the Republic of Northern Cyprus.
I moved to Buffalo, NY in 2004 (Ph.D from UB in 2009), and a very productive period that ended with my graduation, I was mostly a stay-at-home dad. 
Realizing that my career as a composer was over and had- just like my marriage- no chance of revival, I started to practice piano again and even gave two solo recitals with a 2 hour program of -probably for my level of proficiency too demanding, piano pieces by Cesar Franck, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Claude Debussy, and my own "elusions" for piano.
In 2017 I was lucky to find employment as an adjunct assistant professor. That enden with the pandemic in 2020. 
Back to the drawing board, I literally started to paint; - and that is another story, written on a different page...

Benjamin Staern (b. 1978) started his musical experience with studies in cello, piano and percussion in his youth. Studies in musicology at Lund University and subsequently studied composition at the Malmö Academy of Music during 1998-2005 with Rolf Martinsson, Hans Gefors and Luca Francesconi, and made an early breakthrough, while still a student at the Malmö Academy of Music, with the symphonic work The Threat of War (1999). 

From this point on, Staern has developed a deeply personal style with an output including orchestral and chamber works, solo pieces and electroacoustic music. An interesting aspect of his work as a composer is his unusual ability to associate tones and timbres with different colours and tints. This is a variant of a phenomenon called synaesthesia which is fundamental in his perception and the creation of his music, and which is reflected in his sound world as well as in many of his work titles (Yellow Skies, Colour Wandering etc.) 

Today Staern receives commissions on a regular basis. Looking into the near future, he is commissioned to write a major work for Malmö Symphony Orchestra and song cycle for alto Anna Larsson and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. From September 2010 he is composer-in-residence with New European Ensemble for them he composed works from this collaboration such as Tranströmersånger (selected poems from the Sad Gondola - collection by Nobel-prize author and poet Tomas Tranströmer) and Bells and Waves (Chamber Symphony), winner of the SMFF Award 2011 in the category ”most important work in chamber music/smaller ensemble”.

Works by Benjamin Staern is today performed not only by all the major Swedish orchestras but also internationally by orchestras such as the MDR Sinfonieorchester, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Staern has collaborated with ensembles including New European Ensemble, Sonanza Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Aspekte and Stockholm Chamber Brass. Soloists include Håkan Hardenberger, Anna Larsson, Johannes Möller, Karin Dornbusch, Carina Vinke, Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, Philippe Cassard and conductors Michael Christie, Daniel Raiskin, Christian Karlsen, Mats Rondin, Mika Eichenholz and Stefan Solyom.

Polymorphia is a team of media art is organized in 2018.

Founded in 2016 in St. Petersburg, {instead} ensemble is active in various facets of contemporary music.

The ensemble mainly explores three directions of musical activity: discovering and performing new music; compositions of mostly late 20th century (historical direction); collective improvisation. Our line-up is flexible to reflect the ideology of a given project., featuring musicians of various backgrounds (contemporary classical&experimental music, improvisation, live art performance etc.), which in turn influences the repertoire.

We have participated in concerts within the SoundArtLab project of the Baltic branch of State Contemporary Art Centre, the Fifth International St. Petersburg Cultural Forum, Musical Evenings at the Academy of Art, Sound Around Kaliningrad.

The ensemble has performed at various venues in St.Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Minsk, Moscow, Gdansk, and Hamburg, together with musicians such as Danil Akimov, Yaroslav Zemlyansky, Vladimir Kanatchikov, Darya Ponomareva, and joined the St. Petersburg Improvisers Orchestra to perform Spatial Composition № 3 by Vladimir Gorlinsky.

The composers whose works have been premiered by {instead} ensemble include Anatoly Korolev, Daniil Pilchen, Svetlana Lavrova, Artur Zobnin, Ivan Abramov, Elina Lebedze, Dmitry Timofeev, Elizaveta Akbalkan, Alexandra Korableva, Oleg Gudachev, Natalia Solovieva, and Dmitry Shchukin.

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