Reuben Blundell
is Music Director of the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra, one of PA’s great artistic treasures, and was recently re-engaged to serve the orchestra for a sixth season (through its 2019-20 season). This year the LSO works with Philadelphia Orchestra concertmaster David Kim, and completes its groundbreaking recording project, of unheard classics by American Romantic-era composers. Previous seasons have featured soloists including renowned soprano Lisa DiNolfo in Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and flautist David Cramer of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Reuben is also Music Director of the Riverside Orchestra in New York, collaborating with soloists from across New York including members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. He also performs with The Chelsea Symphony, as a conductor and when not conducting, often concertmaster.

His recent CD, American Romantics, Volume I, with the Gowanus Arts Ensemble, received glowing reviews, including Gramophone Magazine, and American Record Guide: “I was completely mesmerized by this lovely recording, one of the best I’ve heard in some time.” The CD continues to be played regularly on WQXR and other stations across the US. He is a voting member of The Recording Academy (responsible for the GRAMMY Awards).

Reuben has performed in his native Australia, in Austria, Chile (conducting the Orquesta Sinfonica de la Universidad de La Serena), Iraq, Japan, Lebanon, the Netherlands, and across the United States. He conducted the New World Symphony in their 2013 John Cage centennial: Making the Right Choices. For eight years he served as Assistant Professor at CUNY’s Hunter College, growing a small ensemble into a symphony orchestra, and he recently joined the conducting faculty at New York’s Trinity School and the Bloomingdale School of Music..

At Eastman, he 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 Secondary School and School of Music), and Sydney with Alice Waten, he was a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow (2002 & 2003) and a principal violinist in the New World Symphony (2003-2004). He attended the Monteux School in 2004 and 2005 under Michael Jinbo, received additional instruction from Marin Alsop, Jorma Panula and Michael Tilson Thomas.