Crafton Beck: Music Director and Conductor

Music Director Chair Supported by the Michael T. McRee Fund, Community Foundation of Greater Jackson

Learn more about Maestro Beck on his website!

Crafton Beck enters his nineteenth season as Music Director of MSO.  In 2019, he concluded twenty-two years as Music Director and Conductor of the Lima Symphony Orchestra in Ohio. From 1996-2001, he was Music Director of the Florida Symphonic Pops Orchestra in Boca Raton.  He has also appeared as guest conductor with many American orchestras, including the Memphis Symphony, the Arkansas Symphony, and the Mobile Symphony Orchestra.

Born in Arkansas, Mr. Beck studied clarinet for many years before choosing a career in conducting.  He received a Doctorate in Conducting from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in 1987. Previous studies were at The Ohio State University and the Aspen School. While affiliated with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the 1990’s, he arranged over fifty selections which appeared on the orchestra’s many recordings, most of which placed on the Billboard Classical/Crossover charts for best-selling albums. His symphonic work Passage, premiered by the MSO in 2014, received the 2015 Award for Musical Composition by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

MSO finds great pleasure in claiming Crafton Beck as one of our own.

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