Rate My Professor Robert Ambrose

Robert Ambrose serves as Director of Bands and Professor of Music at Georgia State University, where he conducts the Symphonic Wind Ensemble, directs the graduate wind conducting program, and oversees the comprehensive university band program. His graduate conducting students have received multiple honors and hold conducting and teaching positions throughout the United States and abroad. Holding a Doctor of Music degree in conducting from Northwestern University, Ambrose studied formally at Boston College, Boston University, and Northwestern University. Under his leadership, the Symphonic Wind Ensemble has performed at prestigious conferences including the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) Southern Division Conference on three occasions and the Georgia Music Educators Association. Since 2001, the ensemble has commissioned over forty new works and completed recording projects such as American Manuscripts on the Summit label and works by Michael Colgrass on GIA’s Composer’s Collection and Teaching Music Through Performance in Band series.

Ambrose maintains an active international career as a guest conductor, clinician, teacher, and lecturer on four continents, with recent engagements in Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and across the United States. In Finland, he has conducted the Finnish Navy Band, Finnish Army Band, Helsinki Police Band, STM Summer Music Festival Wind Orchestra, Rauma Wind Band, and youth wind bands of Kokkola, Kotka, and Rauma, while teaching workshops and lecturing at the Central Ostrobothnian Conservatory and Sibelius Academy. He is founder and music director of the National Chamber Winds in Washington, D.C., Atlanta Chamber Winds, and Ensemble ATL, featuring musicians from the Atlanta Symphony, Atlanta Opera, and Atlanta Ballet orchestras. A prolific arranger, Ambrose has nearly two dozen publications with Presser Music, Murphy Music Press, C. Alan Publications, Fennica Gehrman, and Edition Tilli, appearing on state lists and performed worldwide. Within CBDNA, he served as president of the Southern Division from 2023 to 2025, vice president from 2019 to 2021, state chair for Georgia for over a decade, and on national committees including the Music Education Task Force and Gender and Ethnicity Committee. He leads the Wind Band Track at the Atlanta Summer Conducting Institute.