Robert Debbaut

Bio:

Critics have called Robert Debbaut "a world-class conductor" (Salt Lake Tribune) possessing "an incisiveness verging on the dance" (Kansas City Star) and as "a conductor with the force of emotions in his direction." (Prensa Libre Guatemala). Debbaut has led orchestras and opera companies in the United States as well as in Central and North America, Asia and Europe. Throughout his career Robert Debbaut has been an arranger and composer. His only composition teacher was the legendary wind composer Claude T. Smith. Dr. Debbaut’s compositions include works for string orchestra, full orchestra, chorus, and concertante pieces. He has also produced arrangements of the works of Afro-Caribbean violinist/composers Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Joseph White; Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; Viktor Kosenko, a pioneer for music education in the USSR; and the music of his beloved Mozart, having created a concert ending to the overture to his 1777 opera Il re pastore (The Shepherd King). Robert Debbaut holds the degree Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting from the University of Michigan where he was the first American conductor to be Fellow in Conducting. In addition, he studied at the David Oistrakh Festival in Estonia (Prize and Diploma), the International Conducting Workshop in Prague, the Oregon Bach Festival and the Tanglewood Music Center where he was the first recipient of the Maurice Abravanel Award and in the last conducting class of Leonard Bernstein. His teachers and mentors include Maurice Abravanel, Neeme Järvi, Helmuth Rilling and his principal teacher Gustav Meier.

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