Brittney Boykin


Brittney Elizabeth Boykin, known professionally as B.E. Boykin, is an American composer, conductor, and classically trained pianist.

Early life and education

Boykin is from Alexandria, Virginia. She is African American. She grew up in a musical family, and was inspired by Maya Angelou's poems at a young age. She began learning piano at age seven, and won the NAACP's Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics three consecutive years in a row. She won the Washington Post 'Music and Dance Award' in 2007. She pursued music as a career, studying classical piano at Spelman College, from which she graduated with a B.A. in 2011. She started composing after enrolling in a composition course there, and her compositions quickly became popular within the college's music department. While at Spelman College, Boykin also won first place at the 2009 James A. Hefner HBCU Piano Competition, held at Tennessee State University, and travelled to Italy in Summer 2010 in order to perform in the Grumo Music Festival in Grumo.
After graduating, she continued her studies at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. She continued to compose music during her time there, and was awarded the R & R Young Composition Prize just a few months before graduating. She graduated from in May 2013 with a M.Mus in Sacred Music, concentrating in choral studies.
Boykin obtained her PhD from Georgia State University, concentrating in music education.

Career

Boykin founded her own publishing company, Klavia Press, and later joined Graphite Publishing. In 2014, she was commissioned by Spelman College to write a choral piece, “We Sing as One,” for their 133rd Anniversary, celebrated at the Founders Day Convocation that year. She was also included in The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers, published in February 2023 by Oxford University Press. Boykin is Assistant Professor of Music at the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as the assistant director of the Spelman College glee club, director of the treble choir at the Georgia Institute of Technology, interim director of choral activities at Agnes Scott College, and a teaching artist at The Atlanta Opera.