By: Cameron Knight
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 10/10/2026 – I have never known a Christmas without Peanuts. When “Linus & Lucy” starts, my shoulders bounce and I can clearly see Charlie Brown and the gang dancing.
This holiday season, jazz pianist and composer David Benoit is bringing those familiar melodies to a full orchestra. His new album, David Benoit Conducts A Vince Guaraldi Holiday Symphony, arrives digitally October 30, with a physical release following November 20 through Candid Records. The first single, “Christmas Time Is Here,” is available now.
For Benoit, the connection started in childhood, too. Growing up in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, he read Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip and saw something of himself in Charlie Brown. When A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered in 1965, he was a junior high student and budding pianist, and Vince Guaraldi’s score caught his ear. He began figuring out the music by listening.
Years later, his own playing became part of that world. Benoit’s 1985 recording of “Linus & Lucy” drew the attention of the Peanuts team and began a relationship that would span decades. He went on to compose music for Peanuts television specials and episodes from 1989 through 2006 and contributed music to 2015’s The Peanuts Movie.
This album shifts the focus to another part of his musical life: arranging and conducting.
“I’ve done a few Charlie Brown records where the focus is mostly on me playing the piano, but this is the first time the concept was ‘Let’s focus on David as the conductor and arranger,’” Benoit said in the announcement.
Commissioned by the family of Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson, the album features the Czech National Symphony Orchestra performing Benoit’s arrangements. The selections include music from A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, along with “Just Like Me,” Benoit’s own Peanuts contribution, co-written with Mendelson.
Orchestras are familiar ground for him: he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra for his 1997 album American Landscape and previously worked with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra on Orchestral Stories. This project brings that experience together with the music he first learned by ear as a boy, though he is clear about where the focus belongs.
“Of course, the real focus is on Vince Guaraldi,” he said. “He’s the one.”
That is what makes me curious to hear the full album. These are melodies I know so well, and hearing how Benoit carries them into an orchestral setting will be a new way to spend time with music that has always been part of my Christmas.
Benoit also announced holiday tour dates, including Southern California appearances at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood on November 27 and 28, the Plaza Theatre in Palm Springs on November 30, and the Carpenter Center in Long Beach on December 12.
David Benoit Conducts A Vince Guaraldi Holiday Symphony is available for preorder, and “Christmas Time Is Here” is streaming now.
