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Robin Fountain,
Music Director and Conductor
This is Robin Fountain's fifth season as Music Director and Conductor of the Southwest Michigan Symphony. His tenure has brought significant change to the SMSO, with innovative programming, new standards of performance, and our summer festival "The Water's Edge." He brings to the post the fruits of over two decades of experience in similar Music Director positions, most recently with the Williamport PA Symphony, whom he led to the level of national (NEA) recognition over the course of fifteen seasons. In addition to his permanent posts, he has maintained an active guest-conducting schedule, appearing in recent years with professional orchestras in Russia, Poland, France and Germany as well as throughout USA. IN 2004 he led the Tomsk (Russia) Philharmonic on a five-city concert tour of China. He returned to China and Mongolia with Vanderbilt orchestra in 2007, a tour that included a concert at The Great Hall of the People in Beijing. He will guest conduct in France and Costa Rica during the 2010/11 Season.
Born in the United Kingdom, he was educated at Oxford University, The Royal College of Music in London, and at Carnegie-Mellon. He continued his studies as a fellow at the Aspen Music Festival, and in master classes with Lorin Maazel, Leonard Berstein and others.He has served on the faculty of Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music since 1994. In 2004 he became the first faculty member in Blair's history to win promotion through the ranks to Professor, and in 2007 won the Blair School's Faculty Excellence Award as well as the university-wide Sarrat Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Maestro Fountain lives in Nashville TN and Dushore PA with his wife Linda and son Matthew. |
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