Reuben Blundell joins Hunter College in Fall 2009 as director of the Hunter Symphony. He is concurrently completing his Doctorate of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester (NY), where he studied conducting with Neil Varon and violin with Zvi Zeitlin.

Apart from time with family in the Pacific Northwest as a child, Reuben grew up in Australia, where he performed as a regular substitute violinist with the Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras.

At the Tanglewood Music Center in 2002, he became the first fellow to win a place in the first violins for a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert, qualified to be invited back the following year, and won a fellowship in the New World Symphony, America's Orchestral Academy. While a NWS fellow, Reuben was encouraged in his conducting by Michael Tilson Thomas, and became music director of the CGCC Young Musicians' Orchestra, which he led until moving to Rochester. One highlight of his tenure was a commissioning program, which has grown into an international competition.

Reuben has participated in conducting workshops of the Conductors Guild, the League of American Orchestras, the Bakersfield (CA) Symphony, Eastman, the Naples Philharmonic, and Symphony Australia (with teachers Jorma Panula and Christopher Seaman). Through Symphony Australia he has worked with the Sydney, Tasmanian and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

Prof. Blundell's wife, Karen Birch Blundell, plays oboe in the Sarasota Orchestra (FL), and is Principal English Horn at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro (NC) in the summer.