Dr. Robert Vodnoy's personal page at NSU
Dr. Robert Vodnoy has been the Director of Orchestral Activities/Assistant Professor of Strings at Northern State University since August, 2005. His duties include directing the Aberdeen University/Civic Symphony and NSU Chamber Orchestra, teaching History of Music III and IV, and String Methods. He teaches applied violin, viola, cello and double bass.
Vodnoy is in his seventh season as the Music Director of the Whiting Park Festival Orchestra, a summer festival located twenty minutes from Chicago in northwest Indiana which runs from July 20 through Labor Day. During the summer, he also teaches graduate a Fine Arts course at Valparaiso University where he was an adjunct assistant professor of music from 1998-2005. Vodnoy is the President of the South Dakota Chapter of the American String Teacher Association. In June 2007, he returned for the second year as the Guest String Orchestra Conductor for the Rushmore Junior High Music Camp. Other conducting activities in the Great Plains have included conducting the South Dakota All-State Strings Honors Orchestra at the 2007 SDMEA Conference in Brookings and the North Dakota All-State String Festival in Bismarck in 2006.
Dr. Vodnoy holds a BM summa cum laude and MM in composition from Hartt College of the University of Hartford, and a DMUS in Orchestral Conducting from Indiana University. He studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Monteux Center for Conductors and Orchestral Training from 1968-72. His orchestral compositions include Heart of Fire (2005), Moving Bridges (2001), Warrior (1997), and Generations (1996). Heart of Fire was premiered in 2005 by the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra under Vodnoy’s direction, and received its second performance in 2006 by the Valparaiso University Symphony Orchestra under Dr. Dennis Friesen-Carper. It is scheduled for performances in 2008-09 with the South Dakota Symphony and the Omaha Symphony.
Vodnoy has guest conducted numerous orchestras throughout the United States, including the Bellevue Philharmonic Orchestra, Billings Symphony, Mississippi Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, the Orchestra of the Colorado Music Festival, and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. Internationally, he has guest conducted the Orchestra of the Zhejiang Song and Dance Theatre (China), Czech National Symphony, Orchestra Sinfonica de Sanremo, National Philharmonic of Taiwan, Seoul Philharmonic, and the Jönköping Symphony. In 2001, he formed the American International Youth Orchestra and led it on a three-city tour of China. He was the Music Director of the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra from 1975-2005 and Music Director of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra from 1976-96. He has conducted performances with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Andre Watts, Marilyn Horne, and with the Grand Rapids Ballet, the Michigan Opera Theatre, and the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre.
As a violinist, Vodnoy has performed in recital at Northern State University, at the Northern Fort Playhouse and on the Michigan City Chamber Music 2005 series. He was a member of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra from 1969-72. At Indiana University, he studied violin with Urico Rossi, first violinist of the Berkshire String Quartet. Vodnoy performs on a 1932 Iginio Siega violin.