Four years after he led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its brand-new Children’s Chorus through The Way of the Rain – Hope for Earth at the Meyerson, conductor Julien Benichou returns to Dallas for the Texas premiere of the film that preserved that night. In conversation with Paul Salfen, the French-American maestro—recently named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters—reflects on working with Robert Redford, the unmatched energy in the hall, why he still trusts faith when the notes won’t come, and what he hopes audiences carry home from a work that is both love letter and warning. The screening is Thursday, October 22, at the Horchow Auditorium of the Dallas Museum of Art as part of EarthX’s Half-Earth Day.
On a Tuesday afternoon in Baltimore, still hours from his flight to Dallas, Julien Benichou is adjusting the lighting on a Zoom call and checking the filter that makes his curly hair look “really weird.” His dog has pneumonia. His fiancée may not make the trip. He has not slept enough and he knows it. None of that dims the energy when he starts talking about the night of October 22, 2022, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.
That was the climax of a project that began for him in 2017 at Carnegie Hall, with Robert Redford narrating and Al Gore in the audience, then moved through a more purely symphonic version premiered in Monte Carlo. Dallas was different. It was fully filmed. It was the first performance of the Dallas Symphony Children’s Chorus. It was Benichou’s first time on the Dallas Symphony podium. And it is the performance now preserved in The Way of the Rain – Hope for Earth: A Symphony for Our Planet, returning to Dallas on Thursday, October 22, 2026, for its Texas premiere at the Horchow Auditorium of the Dallas Museum of Art during EarthX’s Half-Earth Day.
“The Dallas performance had something very special about it,” Benichou says. “There was a special energy there that night that is just unmatched. And the great thing about the movie is that it really captures that—it really captures the feel and the mood of the evening.”
The Night It All Came Together
The live evening was both concert and film. Orchestra, choir, and soloists shared the stage while images of Earth, cosmos, and monsoon rains played behind them. Sibylle Szaggars Redford, the environmental artist who conceived the work and is Robert Redford’s wife, shaped the artistic vision. Composer Tim Janis supplied the score. Performance-film artist Floyd Thomas McBee and the Mother Earth soloist Alexandra Raszkazoff completed the palette. Benichou stood in front of the Dallas Symphony and the brand-new Children’s Chorus.
“Through the magic that the director was able to create by seamlessly blending the orchestral and choral performance with the images from the film, it really works really well,” he says. “People seeing the movie are gonna get basically a beautiful synthesis of both.”
When Salfen asks for a favorite memory from the night, Benichou does not hesitate.
“Working with Robert was just so special. He was one of a kind. Like a big heart… with this kind of presence and generosity that marks you for life and changes you.”
He speaks with equal warmth about Szaggars Redford—“she is really a visionary in terms of the art and how the show should be articulated”—and about the Children’s Chorus, whose sound, he says, is clearly audible in the recording. Leading the Dallas Symphony itself was a personal milestone. “It’s a magnificent orchestra,” he says. “Really great artists that are its musicians. For me it was really a synergy of all these artistic endeavors.”
The Gift and the Lesson
Benichou has conducted some of the world’s leading ensembles. He does not treat that as evidence of a superior gift. He treats it as evidence of a particular one.
“My strengths were both the sound quality that I could always get out of an orchestra,” he explains, “and that I would very naturally get the musicians to play with a very beautiful sound. And that they played—that I was able to show small details easily with my hands, and that they played quite together.” Other conductors, he notes, may hold the architecture of a piece more firmly in mind or possess a photographic memory for the score. “Everybody brings their different strength.”
The broader lesson, he says, is simple: honor the strength you actually have.
“Honor your strength, and play into your strength, and go at your weaker points from the point of view of your strengths.”
For him that means approaching structure, style, and even the score itself from a creative and intuitive place. “Going at things with vitality and creativity is what works for me. In the end, your gift is what you are able to apply to things to make them reveal themselves in relation to who you are.”
Don’t Give Up, and Don’t Compete
When Salfen asks what advice he would give someone who wants the life he has built, Benichou answers from the family he came from. Both of his parents were actors and stage directors. They gave him a mindset that has served him in a profession full of setbacks.
“The only people that don’t succeed are the people that give up.”
A diploma, he points out, guarantees nothing. The work after the diploma is harder. The practical advice is therefore to keep deepening the relationship with the music and with the composers themselves—Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, Gubaidulina, whoever is on the stand—and to stay focused on learning rather than on comparison.
“As long as you’re focused on comparing yourself with others, on competing, you’re never gonna get above that level,” he says. “The level above that, which is actually much more sparse, is where people are focused on learning… When you’re focused on learning, you are in a class of its own.”
The Hail Mary That Is Happening Right Now
Salfen’s signature question—about the moment when you simply have to go for it—lands on the present tense. Benichou has just founded the National Chamber Orchestra in Washington, D.C., an elite chamber ensemble created without seed money. He built a board, secured a venue, recruited musicians and funding, and already opened the season with two concerts, including a collaboration with the Army Blues Big Band and a program of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade.
“It’s right now, actually,” he says. “Creating an orchestra from scratch… I created a board, I found a venue, and found the musicians, and I found the funding. We just already started our season… That is the moment where I decided, okay, I want this to happen. It’s a Titanic kind of project. But it’s happening.”
He ties the decision back to the same principle that shaped his conducting studies at eighteen: he never gave himself a Plan B.
“If I had had a Plan B, the conducting itself was so hard that I would probably have fallen into my Plan B. Sometimes you just have to corner yourself into making it work.”
Faith When the Notes Don’t Come
Salfen asks what keeps him creative when the ideas stall. Benichou answers without hesitation.
“You just have to trust in God. You just have to trust and see with your faith more than with your eyes… There is absolutely no reason it’s come to other people and it’s not gonna come to you. There is no reason that God would abandon one of its children.”
“Amen,” Salfen says. Benichou simply nods. The same trust, he suggests, is what allows an artist to keep moving when the next step is not yet visible.
What He Hopes They Carry Home
The film screens Thursday evening at the Dallas Museum of Art—VIP reception at 5 p.m., remarks from Sibylle Szaggars Redford at 6, screening at 6:15, followed by conversation and Q&A. Benichou hopes audiences leave thinking about how much beauty and joy can come from simply being in awe of nature, and how much less consumption that awe might require.
“How much beauty and joy we can derive from just being in awe of nature,” he says. “How much consuming do we really need to do?… Once we realize that the beauty of life is much more intuitive—inter-human connection… around nature, around the arts… just this is enough to make us happy.”
He is clear that he is not calling for the end of economic growth. He is calling for the longer view that EarthX tries to model: collaboration between government and private sector that protects a habitable planet while preserving a livable standard of living. He notes the heat records he has watched arrive in his own lifetime—his village in France climbing from the mid-30s Celsius into the mid-40s, a corner of the Middle East hitting 54 or 55 degrees—and asks whether the current pace is worth it.
“I’m hoping that this inspires also decision makers to come together and think a little longer term.”
A Knight, a Second Home, and December 5
Since their last conversation, Benichou has been named a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic. He is a dual citizen and proud of both countries. Dallas, he says, has become a second home; he has made friends here faster than anywhere else in the world.
On December 5 the National Chamber Orchestra returns to Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown—the church President Kennedy attended—for Handel’s Messiah and Vivaldi’s Magnificat. The program features Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone Kevin Short, a fully professional chorus, and the orchestra’s own musicians in a space Benichou calls “absolutely stunning, with stunning acoustics.” With the Kennedy Center closed, he notes with a smile that they have become, for the moment, “the mini Kennedy Center.”
Before they sign off, Salfen promises prayers for the dog. Benichou hopes she improves. Then the conversation ends the way it began—with anticipation for Dallas.
“I love coming to Dallas,” he says. “There’s nowhere in the world where I’ve made friends so quickly… every time I get to go to Dallas, I’m just so excited.”
FIND JULIEN BENICHOU
The Way of the Rain – Hope for Earth Texas premiere: Thursday, October 22, 2026, Horchow Auditorium, Dallas Museum of Art (EarthX Half-Earth Day). Tickets: VIP $100, General Admission $20.
National Chamber Orchestra: December 5, 2026, Handel Messiah & Vivaldi Magnificat, Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown.
julienbenichou.com · NCOMusic.org · thewayoftherain.org · earthx.org
Interview conducted by Paul Salfen for AMFM Magazine, October 2026.
Paul Salfen is Managing Editor of AMFM Magazine and a veteran interviewer of film, television, music, and sports figures. He is the author of Going For It!, a collection of Hail Mary moments from the artists and athletes he has spent two decades putting on the record.
