SFCO’s Music Director 2003-2023
Ben Simon
Ben started conducting in high school under his teacher Denis DeCouteau, beloved leader of the Oakland Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra.
His hobbies include swimming, yoga, and collecting viola jokes.
Ben 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, and the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic Orchestras.
A native of San Francisco, Ben began his conducting studies in the Bay Area with Denis DeCouteau, continuing at Yale College and the Juilliard School with Otto Werner Mueller and at the Aspen Music Festival with Dennis Russell Davies. Ben has led orchestras and contemporary ensembles in the United States and Europe, and conducted performances for the theater as well as soundtracks for major motion pictures. He has taught at Harvard and Stanford Universities and has been a member of the music faculty at UC Berkeley since 1998.
In 1988 he joined the Naumburg-Award winning New World String Quartet, performing over eighty concerts a year in major venues and summer festivals in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The quartet recorded extensively for MCA Classics; they won a 1991 Grand Prix du Disque for their recording of the string quartets of Debussy, Ravel, and Henri Dutilleux. The New World SQ was quartet-in-residence at Harvard University and performed with artists David Soyer, Raphael Hillyer, Ursula Oppens, Gilbert Kalish, Donald McInnes, Joel Krosnick, Harold Wright, David Shifrin, Carol Wincenc, Christopher O’Riley, John Perry, and James Tocco.