Jean-Pascal Beintus

In 1996 Kent Nagano, then music director of the Opéra de Lyon, recognized Jean-Pascal Beintus's talents as composer and began to commission works from him. Beintus quickly built up a reputation as a fluent and versatile composer and a brilliant orchestrator, receiving numerous prestigious commissions. Since then, he has written music for nearly every type of ensemble; for professionals and amateurs; for theatre, concert hall and film.

The hallmarks of Jean-Pascal Beintus's compositions are their harmonic richness, inventive metrical play, and lush orchestrations. Recent commissions have come from the Berlin Philharmonic (He's Got Rhythm: Homage to George Gershwin), the Russian National Orchestra (Wolf Tracks), the Hallé Orchestra (Couleurs cuivres), the Berkeley Symphony (Berkeley Images, Luna Tree and Bremen Town Musicians), the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (Kobe Symphony), l'Orchestre de Paris (Cordes et lames), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Nature Suite), and the State of California (Manzanar: An American Story).

A recording of Jean-Pascal Beintus's Wolf Tracks featuring Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Sophia Loren as narrators (PentaTone Classics) received a 2004 GRAMMY Award. Beintus's Kobe Symphony is featured on David Benoit's 2005 release, Orchestral Stories, on Peak Records.

Forthcoming projects include a Spanish language rendition of Wolf Tracks, narrated by Antonio Banderas, and, in collaboration with Kent Nagano, an ambitious project to arrange and orchestrate the music of Akira Kurosawa's legendary films.