Robert Bode

Robert Bode is Professor of Music, Alma Meisnest Professor of Humanities and Head of Choral/Vocal Studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, where he has been on the faculty since 1986. He received his doctorate in choral conducting from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In 1982, Bode studied in Wales as a Conducting Fellow at the University-College of Music in Cardiff.

Bode made his Carnegie Hall conducting debut in 1990, conducting the Walla Walla Symphony Chorale in the New York premiere of The Waking by John David Earnest. In March 1995, Dr. Bode conducted the Walla Walla Mastersingers in performances for the American Choral Directors Association National Convention at Kennedy Center and Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. In March 1997, Bode conducted a series of televised concerts with the Yunnan Provincial Chorus in Kunming, China. In February 2000, he prepared the chorus of the National Opera of Mongolia for the first English-language production of Porgy and Bess in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. An active orchestral conductor, Robert Bode is Music Director of the Mid-Columbia Symphony in Richland, Washington.

In addition, he is the Music Director for Zephyr Ensemble in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Composer's Reading Chorus in New York City. Dr. Bode is an accomplished poet. In 2002 he won the Washington State Poets Association prize for his poem Cuisine d’Amour. This poem has been set to music for solo voice and piano by John David Earnest. Other collaborations with Earnest include three cycles for solo voice and piano, Crickets and Commas, In Tomorrow’s Fields, and Songs of Sophistication; and the choral works Night and In Dreams.