Conductor Julien Benichou currently serves as Music Director of the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra, Conductor for Mobtown Modern and Principal Guest Conductor of the New Music Ensemble at Towson University. Previous positions have included Assistant Conductor of the Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, Acting Music Director of the Johns Hopkins Medical School Choir and Orchestra, Assistant Conductor of the Skokie Symphony Orchestra and the Columbia (Maryland) Symphony Orchestra, and director of the pre-college chamber orchestra at Juilliard.  Mr. Benichou's guest conducting opportunities have included the Annapolis Symphony, the Londontowne Symphony and the North Shore Chamber orchestras.  More recently he has been a guest conductor for several Mobtown Modern new music concerts in Baltimore, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/Mobtown Modern Synchronicity project.  Mr. Benichou is also the principal conductor of the Purple City Players new music ensemble. 

Before coming to the United States in 1995 for graduate study with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Conservatory, Mr. Benichou held positions in his native France leading choral ensembles in Martigues, Berre and Montmartre.  Further studies were at the Rueil Conservatory in France where he studied conducting with Jean Sebastian Bereau.  He received a diploma in harmony and counterpoint from La Schola Cantorum in Paris and was the recipient of several awards.  

In addition to receiving a graduate performance diploma from Peabody Conservatory, Julien Benichou earned a master's degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University under Victor Yampolsky, and did further graduate studies at Yale University with Lawrence Leighton Smith.  Among the conductors with whom he has participated in master classes are Leonard Slatkin, Yuri Temirkanov, Marin Alsop, Michael Tilson Thomas and JoAnn Falletta.  At the Hot Springs Music Festival Mr. Benichou received a fellowship as assistant conductor and the following summer as associate conductor.

Mr. Benichou has a special interest in new music and has led commissions, premieres and a recording on the Centaur label. He has also written and conducted the sound track for a recent film. Also an opera and ballet conductor, Mr. Benichou recently collaborated with the Ballet Theater of Maryland, the Morgan State University Choir and Opera Workshop as well as the Baltimore Concert Opera.   Another strong interest is music education.  Mr. Benichou has taken the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra on two European tours, most recently to St Petersburg, Russia where he led a side-by side concert with the St Petersburg Symphony. In the summer of 2008, he traveled with fifteen music  students to the Chaillol Festival in France where he led them in performances of classical and baroque repertoire. He has been a guest conductor for the Calvert County Strings honors orchestra and the All State Festival Symphony at Calpoly in California. 

Upcoming engagements include a fully staged series of performances of Porgy and Bess at the Murphy Fine arts with such singers as Kevin Short, Kishna Davis and the Morgan State University Choir and Opera Workshop as well as guest conducting the Orquestra Sinfonica do Parana in Curitiba, Brazil.

For further information please contact:

Julien Benichou

julien@jhu.edu