Fluidsynth can play midi files with a selected soundfont, e.g:
$ fluidsynth -a alsa -i /path/to/soundfont.sf2 mymidifile.mid
Hey, that works great. Good to know that there is an alternative to timidity. Not sure that I hear any differences in my midi files, but that's probably since I'm too cheap to buy high quality soundfonts.
Is there a default config file that it reads, or do I need to use the -f option?