"Mr. Debbaut is a delight to find, a true Mozartean in the bud,
with an attentive ear to hidden sonorities
and an incisiveness verging on the dance."
-KANSAS CITY STAR-TIMES

In recent years conductor Robert Debbaut has embarked on a journey to seek his ultimate goal: to become music director of a professional orchestra and to positively impact the cultural life of a community. Critics throughout the country have hailed Mr. Debbaut as "a world-class conductor" (Salt Lake Tribune) possessing "an incisiveness verging on the dance" (Kansas City Star) and as "a master who produces a performance which brings out the best in his musicians." (Dearborn Press and Guide).   Mr. Debbaut currently resides in the Chicago area and is actively pursuing his professional goals with orchestras and opera companies throughout the world.

As a guest conductor, Robert Debbaut has led orchestras and opera companies in the United States, Central America, Asia and in Europe. Most recently he guest conducted eight holiday and four educational concerts with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Among the musical ensembles he has guest conducted include the Ann Arbor Comic Opera, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, Dearborn Symphony, DePaul Opera Theatre, Filharmonia Sudecka (Poland), Hartford Symphony, Kharkiv Philharmonic (Ukraine), Midland Symphony, National Symphony of Guatemala, North Bohemian Philharmonic, Salt Lake Symphony, San Juan Symphony, Shanghai Conservatory Orchestra (China), Utah Mozart Festival Opera, Utah Opera, Utah Symphony, Waterloo/Cedar Falls Symphony and the Yaroslavl Symphony Orchestra (Russia). His future engagements include additional concerts with the North Bohemian Philharmonic, return trips to Poland and Guatemala, a concert and recording of previously unrecorded works by Johann Christian Bach with the Italian early music group, "Il Falcone," for Callisto Music in Genoa and his first concert with the Chicago Philharmonic in February, 2005. Discussions are currently underway with three other Polish orchestras as well as orchestras in Lithuania and Peru. Mr. Debbaut's three European concert and study excursions in 2002, 2003 and 2004 were funded, in part, by generous grants from Governor's International Arts Exchange Program of the Illinois Arts Council

Robert Debbaut is currently Visiting Director of Orchestral Studies at the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, his fifth academic appointment since 1987. From 1990-1998 Mr. Debbaut served as Music Director of the University of Utah's Orchestras. He was twice honored by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). In 1995, 1996 and again in 1998 his orchestras at Utah won Down Beat magazine's annual music award for "best classical orchestral performance." His performances with the University of Utah Philharmonia at the 1996 Atlanta International Band and Orchestra Conference and on four tours throughout the Intermountain West received public and critical acclaim. Mr. Debbaut has also served on the faculties of the University of Akron and DePaul University and was Fellow in Conducting at both the University of Michigan and the UMKC Conservatory of Music.

Robert Debbaut holds the degree Doctor of Musical Arts in Conducting from the University of Michigan, where he served as Wu Fellow in Conducting and assistant conductor to his teacher, Gustav Meier. Mr. Debbaut studied with Mr. Meier at Michigan and Tanglewood and, most recently in a conducting master course in Prague, Czech Republic. His participation in this course was made possible by a generous grant from the Governor's International Arts Exchange Program of the Illinois Arts Council. His other teachers include Helmuth Rilling, Ernest Tarrasch, Glenn Block, Maurice Abravanel and Neeme Järvi, with whom he studied and from whom he received a prize at the inaugural David Oistrakh Festival in Pärnu, Estonia in July of 2000 .