Timothy Benson has been the assistant director of the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus since 1994 and has prepared the chorus for a number of its concerts.

He has served as director of music and organist at several churches since playing his first mass at age 10. A Milwaukee native, he began playing the piano at the age of five before taking up pipe organ studies. His former teachers include S. Theophane Hytrek, Christopher Herrick, and Peter le Huray.

Graduate studies in music took Benson to England, where he studied musical composition at Cambridge University. Teachers included Paul Patterson and Robin Holloway, in addition to his private studies in Wales with William Mathias. A summer session in Croydon at the Royal School of Church Music included further studies in organ with Peter Hurford and Stephen Cleobury and vocal pedagogy and choral conducting with Philip Ledger and George Guest. That summer saw Benson as the guest organist in a performance of J. S. Bach’s Magnificat for Her Majesty, the Queen Mother.

Upon returning to the U.S., he joined the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, then under the directorship of its founder, Margaret Hawkins, who asked him to pursue yet further graduate studies with her at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. While there, he studied choral conducting with Hawkins, orchestral conducting with Daniel Forlano, and vocal pedagogy with Signe Quale.

Benson enjoys the life of working with the wonderful musicians of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, bringing the soul-enriching beauty of music to the wider community, providing great organ music and choral direction to churches in the area, and maintaining a small but thriving number of both organ and voice students.