Christopher Rountree

Christopher Rountree is an American conductor known for founding the Los Angeles chamber group wild Up, an ensemble that blends new music, classical repertoire, performance art and pop. Wild Up was named "Best Classical Music of 2012" by the Los Angeles Times.^[1][2]

Rountree has also conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Brooklyn new music festival, the San Diego Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the San Francisco Conservatory Orchestra. He has worked with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, New York's Prototype Festival and Beth Morrison Projects, and assisted conductor Alan Pierson on the critically acclaimed opera "Dog Days." He is a lecturer in conducting at the University of California, Santa Barbara.^[3] He also serves as "Artistic Advisor for New Music" for the American Youth Symphony.^[4]

Rountree is known for his lively conducting style, with the Los Angeles Times writing in one wild Up review, "Rountree punches out rhythms as if they were going out of style. He emphasizes outsize emotions. He could probably get an audience to dance to the slowest movement Shostakovich ever wrote."^[5] While such reviews are typical, he has also been praised for "elegant clarity" in the New York Times.^[6]

Rountree holds his master's degree in orchestral conducting from the University of Michigan,^[7] graduating in 2009.

As a performer, in 2004, he won Drum Corps International's euphonium soloist competition.^[8]

wild Up

Wild Up is a 24-piece chamber orchestra "committed to creating visceraly underprepared, thought-provoking happenings."^[9] Rountree created the group in 2010. Wild Up programs cover a wide variety of music, touching on classical repertoire, new music, pop, rock and pseudo performance art. Wild Up concerts often occur in locations not designed for classical music, and the group uses the unique characteristics of concert spaces in programming its shows. Wild Up regularly debuts new works by its own players – who are mostly 30 years old or younger – and outside collaborators.

Wild Up rose to prominence with a long-running residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2012 that included orchestral performances, small ensemble shows and soloist concerts in spaces in and around the museum, along with sonic experiments in the museum's hallways, galleries and bathrooms.^[10]

References