Concert – TBA
Conductor Reuben Blundell builds relationships between communities and orchestras through artistic collaboration and educational enrichment, while raising their national and regional reputations for orchestral excellence. Currently, he is Music Director of the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra in Pennsylvania, the Riverside Orchestra in New York, and frequently conducts the Chelsea Symphony, also in New York.
Reuben’s three commercially-released CDs, American Romantics I, II and III (on New Focus Records and Naxos), are world- premiere recordings of Romantic-era American string and symphonic compositions, which he researched in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music. The CDs have received frequent airplay on classical radio stations across the United States and abroad, and two of them were recent GRAMMY first-round nominees. They also enjoyed positive reviews in magazines including the American Record Guide, the Absolute Sound, Gramophone Magazine, textura, and the Whole Note.
Reuben has performed in his native Australia, and in Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East, including conducting for the US State Department and the nonprofit American Voices. He recently joined the conducting staff for CAMI-Music’s Lord of the Rings Live-to-Projection concerts, and is in demand as a guest conductor. For eight years he served as Assistant Professor at CUNY’s Hunter College, and now conducts at Trinity School.
At the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, Blundell earned a doctorate in conducting with Professor Neil Varon, also studying violin with Zvi Zeitlin. His violin was a gift from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and after studies in Melbourne (at the Victorian College of the Arts) and Sydney with Alice Waten, he was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow in 2002 & 2003, serving as concertmaster and playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was a principal violinist in the New World Symphony (2003-2005), later returning to conduct in their 2013 John Cage centennial festival: Making the Right Choices. He played in masterclasses for violinists including Leila Josefowicz, Glenn Dictorow, and Joseph Silverstein. Attending the Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestra Musicians in 2004 and 2005 under Michael Jinbo, he received additional conductor training from Marin Alsop, Jorma Panula, Michael Tilson Thomas and Diane Wittry.
Reuben lives in Northern Manhattan with his wife Karen, and oboist, and their daughter, Elizabeth.