Benjamin Wright joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) trumpet section in July 2002 as Fourth Trumpet. From 2006 to 2009, he was acting Assistant Principal Trumpet of the BSO, and in 2010, he became Second Trumpet.
Wright began playing the violin at age 3 and the trumpet when he was 10. He hails from a long line of musicians going back to his great-grandfather, a bandleader and cornetist in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show. Wright studied at the Interlochen Arts Academy and received his Bachelor of Music at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1996, he won the International Trumpet Guild competition and National Trumpet Competition as well as the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) Concerto Competition, and he was awarded the Bernard Adelstein Prize for Trumpet Performance upon graduating from CIM in 1997.
Following two years as a member of the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, Wright spent two years as Fourth Trumpet in the Chicago Symphony. He has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic and the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra. His appearances as Guest Principal Trumpet with the San Francisco Symphony included performances of Mahler's "Eighth Symphony."
Wright has given masterclasses at the Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, Yale, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, Temple University, Mannes, SMU, Baylor and the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He has been a guest faculty member for the Bar Harbor Brass Institute, the National Orchestral Institute and, since 2003, a faculty member at the Tanglewood Music Center.
His students have performed as members of the Atlanta, Dallas, Utah, Sarasota and Seattle Symphonies as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and orchestras in Asia.
Wright is a Yamaha Performing Artist.
