Hungarian/Australian clarinettist Benjamin Pallagi was born in Perth in 1994. He completed his Bachelor of Music in Perth with Allan Meyer and in Hobart with Frank Celata. A Master of Music Performance at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, Hungary followed this, where he studied with Zsolt Szatmári and Csaba Pálfi. He then completed two more Master degrees between 2018 and 2022 in the class of François Benda in Basel, Switzerland.
In Australia Benjamin has played with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Australian Youth Orchestra, the Australian International Symphony Orchestra Institute and the Western Australian Youth Orchestra. Living in Europe since 2015, Benjamin has performed with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hungarian National Opera Orchestra, the Dohnányi Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the St. Gallen Symphony Orchestra, CHAARTS Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix, Swiss Orchestra and with Neues Orchester Basel.
In the 2022/23 season, Benjamin took part in the Bern Symphony Orchestra’s academy program. Subsequently, he was contracted by the orchestra to play 2nd clarinet with bass clarinet for half the 2023/24 season. Following this, in the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons he was again contracted to play in Bern, primarily playing bass clarinet.
Winner of the Woodside Concerto Competition in Perth in 2013, Benjamin was selected in 2019 for the prestigious ARD Music Competition in Munich, Germany.Recently, Benjamin has also become interested in conducting, has completed a two-year postgraduate degree in wind band conducting with Bjørn Sagstad at the Music Academy in Basel and is conducting two community wind bands in Switzerland. He is currently undertaking another postgraduate degree, this time in orchestral conducting at the Zurich Academy of the Arts, studying with Christof Brunner. Benjamin has been living in Switzerland for just over 8 years now and is based in Basel. He aims to find a good balance between working as a freelance clarinettist, as well as a conductor. A keen sportsman too, he is a member of a triathlon club in Basel and enjoys hiking and cycling with his partner in the Swiss mountains.
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