Roby George

Assistant Director of Bands
Associate Professor of Music

B.M. and M.M., Florida State University; D.M.A. (wind conducting), University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music.

Dr. Roby G. George is Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and reports to the Director of Bands. Dr. George has served as Director of Bands at Florida International University, the University of Dayton, Fisk University and Hallandale High School in Florida. He was the founding Director of Bands at the prestigious New World School of the Arts in Miami and worked as an assistant at the Boston Latin High School.

George has led wind ensembles and orchestras at both the high school and university levels in performances both nationally and internationally. His FIU Wind Ensemble has performed in session at the MidWest Clinic in Chicago, and in concert performance at the CBDNA Southern Regional conferences in 2000 and 2004, and most recently at the National CBDNA conference in 2007. He has also conducted a performance of the Greater Miami Youth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York.

He has lectured and presented clinics on topics ranging from conducting to Stravinsky to jazz. He is currently working on a conducting book that will focus on the effectiveness of the gesture and plans to include live video representation and analysis of conductors, both orchestral and wind in their active and natural setting. George continues to clinic ensembles all across the country and enjoys a solid reputation as a conductor and a teacher of conducting. His annual Wind Conducting Symposium, hosted by Florida International University during his 10 –year tenure there, attracted young conductors from all over the Americas. Its connection with the United States Marine Corps has led to an important link between the military conductor and the university professor. The symposium annually features as guest clinicians some of the finest collegiate wind conductors in the country, including Michael Haithcock (Michigan), Mallory Thompson (Northwestern), Gary Hill (Arizona State), Thomas Lee (UCLA), H. Robert Reynolds (USC), Allan McMurray (Colorado), Frank Ticheli (USC), Jack Stamp (IUP), and Craig Kirchhoff (Minnesota). He has had further collaborations with other outstanding conductors, including Harry Begian (retired conductor/University of Illinois) and Lt. Colonel Lowell Graham, formerly of the United States Air Force Band in Washington, D.C.

George is a member of the College Band Directors National Association, the Illinois Music Educators Association and the College Music Society and served for seven years as the Florida chair to the CBDNA. .