Opera Composer • Director • Psychologist
Born in New York City, Ben Bernstein showed early musical talent, praised by age nine for his expressive piano playing. Yet crippling performance anxiety silenced him at 14—a wound that later fueled his groundbreaking work as an opera composer, psychologist, and educator.
An honors graduate of Bowdoin and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, Ben trained with theater luminaries Viola Spolin and Ronald Watkins before entering opera at Juilliard as assistant to Gian Carlo Menotti. There he saw how fear constrains singers and began developing ways to free their voices.
In the ’90s, Mills College welcomed him as a composer based on his original opera Show Me Thy Ways, which premiered to acclaim. Since then, his Song of Songs settings, song cycles, and solo operas have been performed nationally.
Ben founded The Singer’s Gym in 1995, guiding over 600 singers toward spontaneity and joy. His most ambitious project, The Messiah Complex—five one-act operas exploring the inner voices of Handel’s soloists—has drawn international attention and major foundation support. Act IV, Who’s Listening? premieres in 2026.
Equally committed to service, Ben has worked in Harlem, state prisons, psychiatric hospitals in the US and Australia, and impoverished communities in India. His book Crush Your Test Anxiety became a #1 Amazon bestseller, and his Psychology Today blog reaches readers worldwide. In 2023 Bowdoin honored him with its Distinguished Educator Award.
He lives in Northern California with his wife, Chinese American novelist and screenwriter Suk Wah, and travels often to India and the Far East.