Performing Arts

Chris Ramos is currently serving as Director of Bands and Assistant Professor of Music at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He conducts the UVU Wind Symphony and directs instrumental studies within the music education area.

He received the DMA in instrumental conducting at The Hartt School, studying with Glen Adsit and Edward Cumming. While at Hartt, he assisted in conducting Hartt's instrumental performing ensembles and the Greater Hartford Youth Wind Ensemble, and as part of the adjunct faculty he taught courses for graduates and undergraduates in conducting, brass methods, diversity and belonging, jazz pedagogy, and in the core music theory sequence. Before Hartt, Chris served as a band director at Dalat International School in Penang, Malaysia where he taught Western classical and jazz music in performing and theory courses across grades 6-12, and his students were invited to perform in international festivals across Southeast Asia.

He is also an active scholar working at the intersection of musicology, wind band studies, and music education. In 2022 he received the Goldstein Award from the University of Hartford, and in 2016 he received the Joanne Kealinohomoku Prize from the Society of Ethnomusicology Southwest for scholarship combining these interests. He holds degrees from the University of New Mexico where he studied with Eric Rombach-Kendall, and from Texas A&M University-Commerce where he studied with Phillip Clements (conducting), Luis Sanchez (piano), and Mike Morrow (horn).

In addition to his conducting, researching, and teaching, he actively performs both on the French horn and at the keyboard. He has had the opportunity to work and play closely with many incredible artists around the world in both classical and jazz idioms including the likes of Stephen Hough, Wynton Marsalis, Marshall Gilkes, Susan Botti, Allen Vizutti, Bill Watrous, the Boston Brass, Lucy Shelton, Kevin Day, and David Maslanka. He has both produced and performed on records for the Naxos and Summit record labels, and he has performed in and conducted ensembles in concert halls, stages, forests, and patios across the United States and Asia. An avid supporter of new music, he has been part of a number of commissioning projects for solo horn, chamber ensembles, and wind ensembles. He is an active member in the College Band Directors National Association, National Band Association, American Musicological Society, Society for Music Theory, and National Association for Music Education.