Robert Pound is currently Director of the Dickinson College Orchestra and guest conductor with Verge (the performing ensemble of the Contemporary Music Forum, Washington, DC), with whom he performed at the June in Buffalo Festival in 2009. He was Music Director of the West Shore Symphony Orchestra from 2000 to 2002 and was a finalist for the American Symphony Orchestra League/Atlanta Symphony Conducting Fellowship in 2004, and returns regularly as cover conductor for that ensemble.
In 2007, he was both guest conductor and composer with Alarm Will Sound for the premiere of his work plays well with others, commissioned by that ensemble. As a 2003 Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center, he participated in master classes with Robert Spano, Christoph von Dohnányi, and Kurt Masur, and conducted Peter Lieberson's Razing the Gaze in Seiji Ozawa Hall as part of the Festival of Contemporary Music.
Also active as a composer, Pound’s numerous compositions include orchestral works for the Atlanta Symphony (Irrational Exuberance, 2005) and the Columbus (GA) Symphony, which commissioned a luminous jewel lone (2002) jointly with the River Center for the Performing Arts in celebration of that venue's opening. The St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra commissioned Pound's Fêtes and Fireworks in celebration of its 35th anniversary (2005), and the Youth Orchestra of Greater Columbus commissioned Cover to Cover for the occasion of the opening of the city's new public library (2004).
He has received commissions from such distinguished ensembles as the Corigliano Quartet (String Quartet in Five Movements, 2003), the Timaeus Ensemble (creation fables, 2005), and the Florestan Recital Project ("Parta Quies", 2008 and unquiet spirit, 2010). Among performances of his works are two Carnegie- Weill Hall premieres: Music for Strings (for violinist Mark Robertson, 1995), and when we three meet (Trio of New York City, 1999). The Clarke Forum at Dickinson College commissioned Pound's song cycle on texts of Oscar Wilde, The Orbit of the Soul (2000), in honor of the centenary of Wilde’s death.
Pound holds a Bachelors Degree from the University of North Texas, where he studied composition with Martin Mailman, and Masters and Doctoral degrees from the Juilliard School, where he was a composition student of Stephen Albert and Milton Babbitt.