BIOGRAPHY

Having been told a move to Germany would be “too risky” and “too early in his career”, British Baritone Benjamin Hewat-Craw defied convention and moved from Dorset to Deutschland at the age of 22 and has been living and working as a freelance musician in Cologne for the past eight years. The English-born singer “possesses a flexible, richly coloured baritone voice as well as exemplary clear diction" Rheinische Post (2020). In September 2020, he released his critically-acclaimed debut album of Schubert’s Winterreise with the label ARS Produktion and his second album of English Song followed in 2022. Both albums were nominated four times for the OPUS Klassik prize. His specialisation in Art Song has taken him to venues such as the Beethoven House Chamber Music Hall in Bonn, Cologne Philharmonie and Düsseldorf Tonhalle. His chamber music partners include George Warren, Michael Gees  and Yuhao Guo. Benjamin is a scholarship holder of the Werner Richard - Dr. Carl Dörken Stiftung and as a scholar has performed in numerous venues all over Nordrhein-Westfalen. In 2023, Benjamin reached the final of the international song competition ‘Das Lied’.
 

As an opera singer in the last years, Benjamin has appeared as a Flemish Deputy in Verdi’s Don Carlos at Theater Bonn, Aalto Theater Essen and Staatstheater Mainz. He gave his debut as Guglielmo in Così fan tutte in 2020 at the HfMT Köln and in the summer of 2023 in Prague as part of a cooperation with the National Opera, he played the role of Hans in a revival of the operetta Dorfkomtesse by Rahel Danziger. He will revive this role again in May 2024 at the Musikfestspiele in Dresden.

 

As an oratorio soloist in Cologne Cathedral, Benjamin has performed Bach’s St. John’s Passion and Christmas Oratorio, as well as Mendelssohn’s St. Paul and in Bamberg Cathedral performed Handel’s Messiah. In addition to these performances, he has performed  as a soloist with the Gürzenich Choir under the baton of Christian Jeub in Fauré’s Requiem, Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: a mass for peace and Keiser’s Markus Passion.
 

His various chamber music ensembles influenced Benjamin’s projects in the last years. With the Grammy Award winner Michael Gees, he has created a programme with spontaneously written texts and improvised melodies. As part of the newly-formed COLLIDE Quartet, Benjamin has performed at the music festival KlassikSommer in Hamm as well as other concert halls in Germany. The interdisciplinary ensemble combines Art Songs with dance, multimedia installations as well as electronic improvisation. The ensemble has been invited to Davos Festival in Switzerland in the summer of 2024 to present an innovative programme on the theme of Artificial Intelligence.  Benjamin continued his cooperation with Yuhao Guo to focus on traditional song programmes and in 2023, the duo reached the final of the international song competition DAS LIED in Heidelberg.
 
From 2015-2018, Benjamin studied at the conservatoire in Cologne, Germany, with Christoph Prégardien, one of the leading Lieder singers of his generation. He now studies with Lioba Braun who has been a crucial technical and artistic influence on the young baritone. Benjamin has had successful masterclasses with a number of Lied specialists including Sir Thomas Allen, from whom he gleamed the importance of a warm vocal tone. Helmut Deutsch impressed upon him the importance of stresses in the German language and Wolfgang Holzmair revealed the beauty of a spellbinding piano dynamic. Roderick Williams encouraged the simplicity and relaxed nature of expression and Ulrich Eisenlohr the exactitude of the German language. Awards have included a first prize in the Lions' Club Cologne Lied Competition with Yuhao Guo and third prize in the International Organ and Voice Competition 2018 in Neuss, Germany with George Warren.