Virginia’s Richmond Symphony has announced two appointments: JENNIFER ARNOLD as director of artistic planning and orchestral operations and WALTER BITNER as director of education and community engagement.
Jennifer Arnold goes to the Richmond Symphony from Portland, Oregon, where she spent fourteen seasons as a violist with the Oregon Symphony. She also was a member of Portland’s 45th Parallel Universe chamber-music ensemble, spending the last season as director of artistic operations. In 2016, Arnold was the first Diversity Fellow in Arts Administration at the Sphinx Organization in Detroit, Michigan. An advocate for arts education and access, she served three years as the Oregon chapter president of the American String Teachers Association and was on the planning committee for Oregon Bravo, Portland’s El Sistema program. Her string quartet mousai REMIX engages in community outreach in the Portland area, and she represented the Oregon Symphony in its community-based activities. Arnold is a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music. She is a member of the Urban League and volunteers for social-justice-based non-profits.
From 2014 to 2019, Walter Bitner was director of education and community engagement at the Nashville Symphony, where he established its Accelerando program, which prepares students of diverse ethnic backgrounds to pursue music in college and beyond. Bitner began his career as a boy soprano and began to study piano at age seven. He has sung in symphony choruses under directors including Robert Summer, Julius Rudel, and Robert Shaw. Bitner continued piano study in college (where he also studied conducting and music education), performing solo and chamber music recitals, and also studied Baroque lute and recorder, playing with the Tampa Bay Early Music Consort, among others. He has served as director of choral and orchestral programs with the Nashville School of the Arts and founded the Music City Youth Orchestra. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from Charter Oak State College in New Britain, Connecticut and completed teacher certification training at Belmont University in Nashville.
Posted July 12, 2019
