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 John Gordon Ross anticipates his sixteenth season as Music
Director and Conductor of the Western
Piedmont Symphony. His first orchestral opportunities came as Assistant
Conductor of the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra (1972-74) the Canton
Symphony Orchestra and Youth Symphony (1974-75) and the Cleveland Philharmonic
Orchestra (1973-1979). In recent years he has returned to Ohio to lead the
Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lima Symphony, and the Blue Ash Symphony.
He also served as Music Director and Conductor of the Kingsport (TN) Symphony
Orchestra from 1981-1991.
Born in the small town of Selma, Indiana in 1951, John Gordon Ross received a
B.M. from Ball State University and a M.M. from Northwestern University and also
attended the Cleveland Institute of Music. His conducting teachers were Robert
Hargreaves, Thomas Briccetti, and Walter Hendl. He also benefited from the
knowledge and experience of his long-term mentor Robert Marcellus, former
Principal Clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra and a noted conductor. He has
also been a participating conductor in the master classes of Pierre Boulez and
Victor Yampolsky.
He is still semi-active as a trombonist and is the 2nd Trombone of the Lakeside
Summer Symphony (1979-) in Lakeside, Ohio and regularly performs in North
Carolina. He has taught instrumental conducting at Middle Tennessee State
University and Lenoir-Rhyne University as a guest faculty member and other courses
at King College. He held the title of Artist in Residence at Cleveland State
University from 1977-79. He has also regularly conducted educational festivals
in Tennessee and North Carolina and served as guest conductor of the Tennessee
Governor’s School of the Arts Orchestra on three occasions.
John Gordon Ross, has a strong record of presenting and supporting living
composers. This season he will present local premieres by Robert Ward and
Jeffrey Mumford, as well as works by George Walker, Henry Brant, and David
Stern. He has conducted over 500 orchestral and small orchestra works, including
over 30 world premieres.
He is married to cellist and award-winning educator Sarah Rocco Ross. They are
parents to Gracie, a two-year-old cockapoo. Both hold numerous volunteer roles
in the Hickory community. John is a member of the Hickory Rotary Club, tutors at
two elementary schools each week, and sings tenor in the Episcopal Church of the
Ascension Choir. John also loves travel, history, and sports; approaching his
52nd birthday, he continues to work out regularly in hopes of defying gravity
and postponing the inevitable.
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