Conductor Joseph Pollard White is originally from New York and has lived in Seattle since 1985.  He did his undergraduate work at the Eastman School of Music where he studied viola with Heidi Castleman, orchestral conducting with David Effron and Taavo Virkhaus, and choral conducting with Robert DeCormier. He earned his Masters in Viola Performance at the Indiana University School of Music where he studied with Georges Janzer. He received further training in conducting at the Pierre Monteux-Domain Seminar as a student of Charles Bruck. In 1991, he received a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Washington where he was a student of Robert Feist. As a conductor and violist, Mr. White has performed across the United States and Europe, including the Spoleto Festival, Virginia Opera, Bronx Opera, Connecticut Philharmonic, Pittsburgh String Consort, Swiss Radio Orchestra of Lugano, Switzerland and the Martinu Symphony Orchestra of Zlin, Czech Republic. Locally, he has worked with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, Seattle Chamber Players and Seattle Civic Light Opera. He was Music Director of the Rainier Symphony from 1986 to 1995 and led the first reading session of the Northwest Mahler Festival in 1995. Most recently he has worked extensively in the recording field, especially music for film. Mr. White is also a composer and recently completed a “Concerto for Oboe d’amore and Orchestra”.