Who Is Benoit Jutras?

Updated

Benoit Jutras is a composer and musical director best known for his long association with Cirque du Soleil, for which he served as one of its principal composers and musical director over roughly three decades. If you are trying to identify the person behind benoitjutras.com or place his name in the context of Cirque du Soleil, Las Vegas productions, or large-scale international shows, the short answer is that he is a show composer whose credits span permanent Las Vegas spectacles, Disney-based productions, and arena-scale projects in Asia and beyond.

His role at Cirque du Soleil

According to the biography on his site, Jutras has been one of the principal composers and musical director of Cirque du Soleil over the past thirty years. That dual role — writing music and overseeing its musical direction — is the core of his reputation, and most of his best-known work sits within the Cirque du Soleil universe or in productions by collaborators from that world.

Representative works

The site lists several flagship Cirque du Soleil productions he wrote or co-wrote:

Production Notes from the site
O Permanent show at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas; celebrated its eighteenth anniversary in 2017
Mystère Co-written; the first Cirque du Soleil production presented in Las Vegas, running at Treasure Island since 1993
Quidam Signed in 1996; first presented in Montreal, then toured worldwide before closing in New Zealand in 2015
La Nouba Presented at Disney World in Florida from 1999 until its December 2017 close, after more than 18 years

These four titles are the quickest way to place him: two are long-running Las Vegas fixtures, one is a touring masterpiece, and one was a Disney World production.

Beyond Cirque du Soleil

His work extends well past the Cirque du Soleil brand, often in collaboration with director Franco Dragone:

  • The House of Dancing Water — a mega-show that opened in 2010 at City of Dreams in Macau and drew critical acclaim.
  • The Han Show — a mega-show in Wuhan, China, composed for Franco Dragone.
  • Le Rêve at the Wynn resort in Las Vegas — he composed the original 2005 version, which ran until 2016, and later recomposed a brand new soundtrack for the show.
  • Theme park music — original music for Lotte World Theme Park in Seoul and for The Land Of Legends in Antalya, Turkey.
  • World's Away — original soundtrack for the 3D film produced by Cirque du Soleil and James Cameron, with the singer "E" of the group Eels on the opening credits song.
  • Amuse — music for a show by the Canadian company Les 7 doigts de la Main, staged in Mexico City.
  • Universal Studios Orlando — music for the 2018 Christmas Parade.

Current and recent projects

The site's "Latest News – In The Works" section notes that Jutras was working on a new Cirque du Soleil/Disney mega production set to open at Disney World Orlando in 2019, a water show at a marine and safari park in Bali, and music for the ride Road Rage at Trans Studio Bali. It also mentions that, with two long-time collaborators, he was developing a new musical-rock opera described as a project particularly dear to him.

How to use this

If you arrived at benoitjutras.com looking for a specific credit — a Las Vegas show, a Disney production, or a theme park soundtrack — the works above are the most likely matches. The site itself organizes his material under sections including Bio, Projects, and Contact, with a French-language version also available, so the Projects section is the place to check for a fuller credit list than the bio summarizes.