Beau Benson

Beau Benson is a conductor scheduled to lead performances with Oregon East Symphony and Waco Symphony Orchestra. Listeners can catch a season-opening program of Italian and Latin American orchestral color, and two performances of Tchaikovsky's beloved holiday ballet score, The Nutcracker.

In Pendleton, the program pairs Respighi's Trittico botticelliano, a three-part orchestral tribute to Botticelli paintings full of pastel orchestration, with a work titled Fiesta! by López, likely a rhythmically vivid concert opener, and Schreker's Kammersymphonie, a dense, single-movement work for chamber orchestra from the early twentieth century blending late Romantic lushness with more searching harmonic language. In Waco, the concerts center on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, Op. 71, the complete ballet score behind the famous Sugar Plum Fairy and Trepak dances, offering the kind of orchestral color, from delicate celesta to full brass fanfares, that has made it a perennial holiday favorite for audiences of all ages.