Benjamin Simon,  Music Director

"Mr. Simon performed with consummate musicianship and a beautiful tone"

New York Times

"An exciting performer... one of the Bay Area's finest violists"

San Francisco Chronicle

Benjamin has performed for audiences around the world as violist of the Naumburg Award-winning New World String Quartet, the Stanford String Quartet, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, principal violist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra as well as the Los Angeles and New Century Chamber Orchestras, and the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic Orchestras. A native of San Francisco, his teachers include Daniel Kobialka, Broadus Erle, Raphael Hillyer, Lillian Fuchs, and Emmanuel Vardi. Benjamin began his conducting studies in the Bay Area with Denis DeCouteau, continuing at Yale College and Juilliard with Otto Werner Mueller and at the Aspen Music Festival with Dennis Russell Davies. Benjamin has led orchestras and contemporary ensembles in the United States and Europe, conducted performances for the theater as well as sound tracks for major motion pictures. He has taught at Harvard and Stanford Universities and is currently on the music faculty of UC Berkeley. He is in his fourth season as Music Director of the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra, an award-winning youth orchestra comprised of talented string players from around the Bay Area.

Benjamin has performed on several occasions as a viola soloist with the SFCO and made his conducting debut with the ensemble in January 2000. Benjamin is also an active chamber musician. Founder of the popular ÔSundays at Four’ chamber music series at The Crowden School, he is a founding member of the California Piano Quartet and the faculty violist of the Zephyr International Chamber Music Festival in Courmayeur, Italy.

REVIEWS

Appointed by Maestro Braun in 2002 as Music Director of the SFCO, Benjamin has brought a fresh approach and a dynamic new energy to the organization.

Saturday night’s concert at First Unitarian Church in Palo Alto, part of the opening salvo from the new music director, Benjamin Simon, was a knockout. The Mozart was played with unusual sensitivity and musicianship Simon is new to the scene as a conductor (though his fine viola playing is a known quantity), and if this concert is an example of what we are to expect, hold on tight. This was imaginative programming, well-performed, intelligent, and thoroughly musical. It’s so pleasant to watch instrumental musicians who relish the pleasures of performance and whose attitude shows it.

Daniel Leeson, San Francisco Classical Voice, January 2002

Not only has Simon built on what Whitson accomplished in those four decades, but he has burnished the orchestra with a new precision and elegance. There is no question that he is fine conductor--perhaps of the first rank-- and the rapport between he and his charges is palpable.

Keith Kreitman, San Mateo Times, May 2003.